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AGATHA 


AND THE SHADOW 



BOSTON 


ROBERTS BROTHERS 

3 Somerset Street 

1887 


Copyright, 1886, 

By Roberts Brothers. 


5ani0crg{ta JJJrcss : 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 


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CONTENTS 


Page 

I. The Shadow . 9 

II. The Morning Watch 16 

III. The Brook-side 19 

IV. Mr. Anselm’s Antecedents .... 24 

V. Hopestill Oldum 31 

VI. The Kings of Plymouth 40 

VII. Nauset 50 

VIII. The Prence Pear-Tree 58 

IX. Enoch’s Rock . ‘ 72 

X. The Jewess 82 

XI. An English Wife 92 

XII. Saint Bernard Anselm .- . . . . loi 

XIII. Raking the Sea 113 

XIV. Quinemiquet 125 

XV. Quadequina 143 

XVI. Cape Cod Freemen 151 

XVII. The Ordinary at Sachonesit . . . 157 


VI 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

XVIII. At Home in the Sea 171 

XIX. The Oaks of Wesko 184 

XX. ’ScoNSET 190 

XXI. The Camp at Coskata 207 

XXII. Crossing' the Dam * 224 

XXIII. At the Head 240 

XXIV. The Hudson 258 

XXV. Entering the Haven 273 

XXVL Agatha 286 


To THE Reader 307 










AGATHA 


AND THE SHADOW. 






AGATHA. 


I. 


THE SHADOW. 

SHADOW was stealing along the walls of 



the room where Bernard Anselm lay dying; 
and it had already fallen upon the bed when the 
wife, Agatha, turned her head toward the low fire 
of yellow-birch, to see what it was which inter- 
cepted the light. 

It was now near midnight. There had been 
absolute silence for more than half an hour, — a 
silence reminding the watcher of that brief season 
of heavenly quiet revealed in the Apocalypse. 
After her long alternations between hope and 
fear for the life of her husband, Agatha knew 
that the predestined end was fast approaching. 
God alone would live to fulfil in her his exceed- 
ing great and precious promises. So she antici- 
pated her youthful widowhood. 


10 


AGATHA. 


She had been whiling away the long hours of 
idle, anxious watching — when nothing could be 
done to raise one who was now counted with the 
dead — in thinking over her short, happy mar- 
ried years. She recalled the hour in which she 
first saw Bernard sitting by the side of her 
brothers in Pastor Robinson’s church in Leyden. 

Agatha had never said to herself that she 
loved Bernard at sight; but from first sight 
she had confidence in him as if she had always 
known him, — a feeling that to him she could 
turn as the needle to the pole. Her love was 
conscious of no wiles ; its motion was as natural 
as if actuated by animal magnetism. Upon the 
night of that Sabbath, which had been more 
holy for the first sight of her soul’s mate, she 
dreamed that she had been with young Anselm 
in some former stage of existence, — that she 
had spent with him blissful centuries ; and that 
now she had her own, — as if an echo had been 
recovered from happy days in ages before birth. 
And when she awaked, she believed that the 
harmony of all worlds demanded their union. 
Her ambition, her force, were matched by his 
ability and his manly beauty ; so that her being 
came to be of fair proportion in loving him. 


THE SHADOW. 


11 


Of her marriage she had made a consecration. 
Had not God recorded her vow ? Did not her 
husband learn to look to her as to his con- 
science, his better nature ? Agatha thought of 
her husband’s long absences from her since their 
marriage, — engaged as he was in the service of 
the Colony, and making long voyages ; and she 
thought of her thrill of expectation, when looking 
for his return. Now he was sailing upon the cur- 
rent of Death’s river, and would never return. 

With mind not clear from the superstitions of 
our fathers, who dwelt habitually upon the con- 
fines of the eternal world, often seeing tokens of 
some supernatural presence, the memory now 
returned to her — as it had returned perhaps a 
thousand times — of that shadow of a raised 
hand which fell upon the altar in the midst of 
the ceremony of her marriage, in the crowded 
church at Leyden. It was as if some one had 
stood behind the bridegroom. No hand of the 
grim Puritans was raised to forbid the banns 
when Bernard Anselm, the son of the great 
India merchant of Amsterdam, was united by 
Pastor Robinson to Agatha, the daughter of Elder 
Brewster ; but the bride did see the shadow of a 
raised hand fall athwart the white altar. 


12 


AGATHA. 


Agatha had attributed the vision to the fan- 
tasies that flitted through her brain and before 
her eyes in that confused hour in which, so early, 
she exchanged her happy child-life for the cares 
of a matron, — an hour of happy agitation, when 
a maiden conjures up a thousand shapes ; but 
she had never been able to rid herself of the 
thought, hardly definite enough to be seriously 
considered, that an evil angel, seeking to turn 
her away from blissful paths, threw the shadow 
upon the altar, and that she alone saw it. Or it 
might be a warning sent of God. What the 
symbol might mean she could not divine, — 
surely not the death of her mother, in Plymouth, 
although she died the self-same day ; nor the 
recent death of her honored father ; much less, 
the trivial pecuniary disaster which Bernard had 
encountered just before his sickness, by the cap- 
ture of their trading-post to the eastward by 
the marauding French ; not the succession of 
losses following her husband in the New World; 
nor the ill fate that attended his service of the 
Colony, — although all those events had seemed 
dark to her. That shadowing hand might mean 
more. Would it not have been better had she 
conversed with Bernard about it ? Was it too 


THE SHADOW. 


13 


late ? The sufferer had but just now moaned, as 
if not past consciousness. Could it be — it must 
be — that the uncanny hand at Leyden betokened 
his early death? If so, it might return at the 
last hour. 

She now saw the shadow of a raised hand 
stealing along the wall ; and it fell athwart the 
bed of the dying. 

If superstitious, the Plymouth matron was not 
without strength; she habitually leaned upon the 
arm of the Almighty. She could smile at the 
adversary of souls, and stand without trembling 
in the very presence of the powers of darkness. 
Quietly turning her head toward the low fire of 
yellow-birch to see what it was which inter- 
cepted the light, Agatha saw the shape of a 
young woman of about her own age and figure. 
The head of the strange form was covered with a 
dark Spanish shawl ; which even in that flicker- 
ing light presented strong cardinal lines, serving 
to illuminate the face. Eyes of great brilliancy 
looked out from the folds ; but they were not 
fixed on Agatha. The stranger’s gaze was stead- 
fast upon the form of the dying Bernard, toward 
whom she was stealthily advancing with her 
right hand upraised, which had cast the shadow 


14 


AGATHA. 


before the mournful eyes of the young wife. 
One accustomed to read faces might perhaps 
have caught at a glance the mien of a religious 
enthusiast, — unless indeed there was a lurid glare 
in those eyes that seemed so full in the half 
light, — as this strange woman advanced toward 
the bedside. Agatha could not move quickly 
enough to hinder the Spanish shawl from touch- 
ing the low couch of the dying. The woman 
had brushed by Agatha as if not aware of her 
presence, or deeming her an intruder in her 
own house. Had the daughter of Brewster been 
a mere shade, like the ghost of her father, the 
weird prophetess of fair face could not have 
more completely ignored her existence than 
when she moved swiftly, silently, and placed 
her hand upon Bernard’s pallid cheek, which 
must have seemed almost clammy to her 
touch. 

“ Art thou the man ? ” she asked in low, 
musical, but biting and sarcastic tone. “Thou 
art the man. Am I not thy betrothed, nay, thy 
wife, by thine own act ? This, then, is my place, 
at thy dying-bed.” 

Bernard Anselm’s breathing now grew heav- 
ier ; and there was a strange choking sensation, 


THE SHADOW. 


15 


not unlike that which attends the moment of 
dissolution. 

“ I claim thee,’’ said the low, musical voice. 
And the woman was about to kneel, as if she 
would kiss the still animated clay. 

But Agatha laid her hand upon the stran- 
ger’s arm, as if to lead her away, — ‘‘I prithee, 
hither. Disturb not the dying.’’ 

Gazing fixedly into the sweet face of pale 
Agatha, it could be seen by the strange woman 
that no contest could be wisely made ; and she 
stepped back from the bedside. 

“ I will see thee after the funeral,” added 
Agatha, bestowing upon the woman a few gold 
coins in a little silk purse. Perhaps thou hast 
some claim upon Mr. Anselm of which I am 
ignorant. I will deal justly by thee. But leave 
me alone to-night.” 

It is not in my heart to hate thee, although 
thou didst rob me,” replied the strange figure, 
whose eyes had lost their fire. “ What thou 
didst was unknown to thee. My wrecked life, 
my lost soul, I owe to thee ; but thou art 
innocent.” 

And the apparition vanished. 


II. 


THE MOENING WATCH. 

ONG were the small hours of that night to 



the mourning Agatha. Her husband had 
fallen into a sweet sleep as soon as the door 
closed upon the Shadow. His temples were 
bathed by the tears of his wife ; and her dark 
tresses must have smoothed away the agonized 
expression upon Bernard’s face, for his sleep 
was like that of a little child. The wife, not yet 
a widow, gazed into the slowly dying embers. 
What a boon out of heaven had Bernard been to 
her. In turn, she had perfect faith. It was not 
difficult for her to persuade herself that the Evil 
One lurked in the hours of darkness to snatch 
at the souls of those near death; and it was 
more credible that a fallen angel had visited 
her house that night than that Bernard had ever 
been untrue. 

Then she thought over every second of the 
time the strange presence was in their room. 


THE MORNING WATCH. 


17 


And she confidently looked for meeting- the pos- 
sessed one at some future day, — not unlikely 
after the funeral ; unless, indeed, God intended 
to restore the soul of her husband in these 
morning hours of sweet slumber. 

The fire was replenished ; and the great folio 
Bible was taken from its place. Then the Puri- 
tan matron — so young as to appear to be 
almost still a girl — comforted herself with 
the story of the resurrection of Lazarus ; and 
now she prayed to Him who wept with the 
mourners and raised their dead. Afterward, 
reclining upon the oak settle, she slept. 

When she awoke at day-dawn, it was appar- 
ent that Bernard was better. He even spoke, 
when the sunbeams first touched the oiled paper 
in the small window-sash : “ I cannot, my dear 
Agatha, die, and leave your life to be made 
wretched by that woman who came in last 
night.” 

Then he paused for breath. Agatha making 
no reply, he asked, — “ Hid Rachel come, or did 
I dream it ? I heard her voice. I am sure 
that the Jewess did come. When I am well, 
I will tell you all about it.” 

Agatha made no reply. Could it be that the 
2 


18 


AGATHA. 


midnight visitor was, after all, of flesh and 
blood ? And could it be that her husband had 
known her ? 

Bending over his pillow she showered her 
tears upon his forehead, and kissed them all 
away. She heated the venison-broth, and said : 
“ When you get well, we will talk of many things 
in the new life God vouchsafes to us. But we 
will not talk of anything that troubles your 
heart or mine until the angel of health 
returns.” 


III. 


THE BROOK-SIDE. 

OULD the Town Brook of Plymouth, in the 



Old Colony, tell the story of all that it 
saw and heard during the first generation of 
the white settlement, no small part of the world 
would go there to listen. They would gather 
from the prairies of the West, wherever the New 
England Zone includes happy homes ; and the 
heads of many of the great business houses in 
the chief cities would for the day lay aside all 
care, to hear the pathetic story of the Brook. 
Thoughtful citizens of far-off nations would 
come. They would come in the dead of winter, 
to listen to the gurgling water under the ice, 
telling its heart-breaking story of by-gone cen- 
turies ; they would come in the springtime, when 
its banks are trailing with arhutus^ and when 
the trees are sounding with song ; they would 
come in the heats of summer, to learn whether 
tlie brook was still flowing like that undying 


20 


AGATHA. 


life which originated upon its banks ; they would 
gather in the autumn, when the tinkling waters 
are laden with dead leaves, mindful of the 
precious death of those humble patriots who 
were permitted to inscribe their names so high 
in the temple of the New World fame. 

Strange would be that part of the Brook’s 
story relating to the April morning when 
Agatha Anselm left her husband in the care 
of her loving sister Patience, the wife of Thomas 
Prence, and walked abroad to breathe the sweet 
air, and gather a few wild flowers for Bernard. 

She had gone up the left bank of the brook 
some distance ; and she stood listening to the 
robin-song upon the hither bank, when she saw 
the -strange woman who had visited her last 
night, apparently asleep upon a bed of ground 
hemlock. Letting drop her gathered apron and 
its sweet burden of flowers, in her startled 
haste, Agatha concealed herself in the shrub- 
bery. And she prayed that God would be 
pleased to reveal to her something relating to 
this creature, be she Jewess or possessed of a 
devil. 

Agatha had not long to wait. Rachel, turn- 
ing upon her dry and tufted bed, made her way 


THE BROOK-SIDE. 


21 


to the brook-side, and bathed her face, and ar- 
ranged her long black locks, as she looked into 
a still, mirror-like surface, underneath which 
the trout were silently watching for prey. 
Then, turning to the east, she stretched her 
hands toward heaven : — I thank Thee, 0 
Lord God of Abraham, that Thou hast heard 
me out of heaven ; and given me the life of 
Anselm, for which I prayed in the hours of 
darkness. I now pray Thee to curse him, — 
unless Thou shalt give him penitence and works 
meet for repentance. He is with Thee. Curse 
Thou every work of his hands. May he go to 
his grave childless. And let him find a curse 
in the Gentile woman he took to wife, after his 
betrayal of my trust. May she become to him 
a fountain of anguish.’’ 

Then the Jewess bowed her head, and 
dropped her arms, and kneeled upon the green 
grass : — 

“ I pray, too,” she said in sweet tones, so mu- 
sical as to reach far through the forest, for my 
mother. Thy handmaid. God pity her gray 
hairs, and her lonely life. And hear her prayer 
for Thy vengeance in this life upon Bernard 
Anselm, the false-hearted, the betrayer, who has 


22 


AGATHA. 


wrought in me the ruin that now offends Thee. 
Pity me, too, in my life of voluntary degrada- 
tion, in my life of an appearance of evil, — to 
entrap, beguile, and spoil the Egyptians ; to 
which my father, now in the bosom of Abraham, 
made me vow when he was gathered to his fore- 
fathers. Unworthy, lost, ap outcast from earth 
and heaven, do not Thou utterly forget me. 
Thou Pardoner of the sins of Jeshurun in a 
thousand generations.” 

The wretched woman, whose face was marked 
with the beauty of the Orient and flushed with 
the blood of distant centuries, now quieted her- 
self so far as to sing in mournful measure a 
Hebrew melody, which, for the heart of grief 
in it, might have come down from the rivers of 
captivity in the ancient East. Then she arose, 
and drew from her hollowed girdle a little pul- 
verized parched corn; and she drank of the 
brook, — then disappeared in the forest. 

Agatha, in returning to Bernard, forgot her 
flowers, and was in no small perplexity : “ Is this 
strange woman possessed of the devil ? Or has 
my Bernard been once possessed of the devil ? ” 
Silently she prayed for the revelation of the 
secret. And she asked herself whether she 


THE BROOK-SIDE. 


23 


needed to pray for special grace from heaven to 
make her a blessing, not a curse, to Bernard, 
even if it should prove true that the sins of his 
youth had found him out. Already the demons 
of doubt were beginning to dart their fangs into 
her heart, — doubt concerning the purity of life 
of him whom God had almost removed from a 
world of temptation; doubt having in it the 
elements of unquenchable fire, and a domestic 
world of woe, — unless God should reign in the 
heart of Agatha. 


lY. 


MR ANSELM’S ANTECEDENTS. 

HE recovery of Mr. Anselm was deemed 



little less than a miracle ; and there was 
perhaps not one home among the thirty then 
comprising the Pilgrim settlement which did 
not justly claim a share in the answer Heaven 
had bestowed on prayers to this end. It was 
thought that none could be spared so little as 
he. Those who in Leyden had served in a vari- 
ety of employments — the carpenter, the smith, 
the pump-maker, the mason, the baize-worker, 
the tailor, the two ribbon-makers, two hatters, 
two block-makers, three bombazine-workers, 
three serge-makers, three printers, four fustian- 
makers, five merchants, seven wool-workers, and 
nine workers in silk — were all glad to have the 
capital which was brought to Plymouth by the 
son of the great spice-merchant. 

Had not the Anselms come up out of Italy 
into France as early as the eleventh century ? 
Did they not send an eminent representative to 


\ 


MR. ANSELM^S ANTECEDENTS. 25 

the Holy Land with Godfrey of Bouillon at the 
taking of Antioch? Settling upon the North 
Sea in the twelfth century, one of the ancestors 
of Bernard went thence as the ambassador to 
Constantinople, a. d. 1140. The treasures of 
the Japanese trade opened to Bernard Anselm’s 
grandfather in 1557 ; and in the East Indian 
traffic son after son succeeded to the spoils of 
the Orient, — the spice monopoly being held by 
a few Dutch merchants for a hundred years. It 
was a happy omen that the great mercantile 
house was committed to the Pilgrim enterprise. 
And no one deserved such a husband, or so 
fitly might become their social queen in the 
hearty admiration of the godly women, as Ag- 
atha, the youngest of the Brewsters. Her tarry 
in Holland had given Agatha more schooling 
than fell to others of her own years. The moth- 
ers in the - Colony adored the memory of her 
sainted father, and looked with pride upon the 
girlish-looking matron who had become daugh- 
ter to the house of Anselm ; and the giddy 
creatures of sweet sixteen, who were not quite 
sober even in Plymouth, looked up to Agatha, 
and told strange rumors among themselves 
about her wealth. 


26 


AGATHA. 


Mr. Anselm — or Bernard, as even a few of 
the young people dared to call him — was a 
great favorite. Well educated, of easy address, 
of keen business perception, with means for 
great ventures, and paying the largest tax, — it 
was easy for him to take a prominent part in 
the affairs of the colony. The government 
being vested by the body of freemen solely in 
their Governor and his Assistants, Mr. Anselm 
had already been one of the Assistants, — the 
illness of Bradford at the time throwing the 
burden mainly upon Agatha’s husband. No one 
can look into the Plymouth story without seeing 
that Mr. Anselm was by all odds the ablest 
business man among them, — being the only one 
comparable with those able merchants who 
founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At 
that time the Dutch were fairly at the head of 
the mercantile world, — of vast enterprise in 
exploring distant seas, breaking the Spanish 
monopoly in the Indian Ocean, so that the prod- 
ucts of the East poured into the cities of Hol- 
land. In this, Amsterdam had one half the 
profits and the controlling interest. The great 
house of Anselm was foremost at the outset 
in fighting the Spanish ships, in East Indian 


MR. ANSELM^S ANTECEDENTS. 27 


conquest, and in gathering the riches of distant 
seas. There can be no wonder that the men of 
Plymouth honored themselves in bestowing upon 
Bernard Anselm so many offices of high trust 
in matters difficult. 

In respect to his true life it is impossible to 
think of him by any other name than Bernard, 
beloved of the Brewsters. Indeed, it was said 
by the oldest in the company of women, who 
had childhood memories of the neighborhood 
of Scrooby, that his union of gentleness and 
determination reminded them of the Keverend 
B/ichard Bernard; which led them usually to 
speak of him familiarly as Bernard, rather than 
formally as Mr. Anselm. It was this Bernard, 
this general favorite, who had such mastership 
of the details of business that he had been 
entrusted with settling the Colonial affairs with 
the merchant adventurers ” who had shipped 
the Pilgrims to America. That cargo of con- 
science carried in the Mayflower, by a necessity 
which knew no law, was tied to a seven years’ 
partnership represented in shares, — all improve- 
ments made by the Colony to be held answerable 
for the charges. The ridding themselves of 
this yoke was due to the skilful conduct of 


28 


AGATHA. 


Bernard Anselm. No small risks were assumed 
in doing this. He also aided largely in bringing 
over more Pilgrims from Leyden. 

He had, moreover, measurable success in the 
Kennebec-patent business, although it led him 
into a snare. It having been desired by William 
Bradford, the silk-dyer of Spartan simplicity of 
life, to gain more liberty by charter, he could 
think of nothing else ; it was as if rainbow tints 
were flitting before him, the fair robe of free- 
dom. But Mr. Anselm and the “ undertakers ” 
in England (who stood with the Pilgrim leaders 
instead of “ the merchant adventurers ”), desired, 
also, certain exemption from customs for a term 
of years. The contest on this point killed the 
desired charter, although it had passed the King’s 
hand ; so that the five hundred pounds expended 
in influence ” was lost. The fur trade of the 
eastern river was obtained, but not the larger 
freedom. This led to sharp criticism. Those 
were times in which an Englishman having a 
fancy for that kind of goods might pick up in 
the market now and then a little personal free- 
dom. Some years it was more scarce than 
others, and the price fluctuated. Any one buy- 
ing was obliged to carry it out of the country ; 


MR. ANSELM^S ANTECEDENTS. 29 


he might not flaunt his freedom in England. 
If he cared to go three thousand miles over 
the brine into the bush, he could be free ; and 
if he discreetly said little about what was in his 
charter, he could establish precedents of freedom 
for future ages. Now and then a bright man 
could make a good thing by speculating in this 
kind of commodity. There was John Pierce, 
who bought a patent for fifty pounds ; it had 
more freedom in it than the Plymouth charter, 
and more territory. It so lapped as to prove 
a rival right. Governor Bradford bought it in 
the market at ten times the first cost. The 
Shirley letters, rescued from a Nova Scotia 
grocer’s back shop make it probable that Mr. 
Anselm would not pay out enough in bribes 
to win his point promptly. 

The Colonial agent did, however, do one thing 
in the business which brought him into great 
discredit at home ; he engaged Tom Morton 
as his secretary and agreed to return him to 
America, in order to please Gorges, one of the 
persons through whom he had to work in his char- 
ter business. First the ^‘merchant adventur- 
ers,” then afterwards the “ undertakers ” were 
not at one with the spiritually-minded, earnest 


30 


AGATHA, 


Bradford and Prence in their intense purpose. 
Part of them adhered to the Church of England ; 
they were willing Morton should return, think- 
ing the Plymouth rule too rigid. The recal- 
citrant Thomas had looked upon himself as 
almost the only man in Massachusetts who had a 
good time as this world goes ; and his memory of 
the “ bewty ” of Mount Wallaston, Merry Mount, 
— or “ Mount Dagon,” as his enemies called 
it, — made him eager to go back, not only to 
hunt and fish, like the true sportsman that he 
was, but to vex Bradford and the Bay people by 
showing that some things could be done as well 
as others. But no explanation could satisfy 
the Governor ; and some, who hated the liber- 
tine Morton most thoroughly, were not slow to 
intimate that Anselm himself must have a tinge 
of unsanctified blood about him, else he could 
ill brook the company of Morton even for a 
day. Mr. Anselm was, therefore, just before 
his sickness so nigh unto death, “ caused to 
pack Morton away.” When, now, the mysteri- 
ous Jewess was found to be somehow connected 
with Bernard, the theory that he was one of 
Morton’s libertines flew like wild-fire among 
the gossips of Plymouth. 


V. 


HOPESTILL OLDUM. 

"D ACHEL’S first appearance bj daylight in 

^ Plymouth occurred soon after Bernard 
Anselm and Thomas Prence went to Nauset to 
set up their homes in the new town, — expecting 
soon to return for Agatha and Patience, who 
were keeping house together in the dwelling- 
place of the former. It was upon the day of 
Mary Chilton’s quilting party that Agatha saw 
the figure in the Spanish shawl standing upon 
Forefathers’ Bock. She could but wonder what 
the modest maidens of Plymouth would think in 
their hearts, if it should sometime appear that 
Bernard was at fault concerning that woman 
standing in the noon-tide upon the Rock. 

It soon appeared that other eyes than Agatha’s 
had seen Rachel ; and that the stranger had 
been interviewed by Mistress Tabithay Scadding, 
and by Miss Hopestill Oldum Old-one ” the 
boys called her) who gave the quilting party. 


32 


AGATHA. 


Without hindering busy fingers at the quilt, the 
women’s tongues were busy. It would be a 
false impression in respect to the earliest years 
of the Old Colony, if it were to be believed that 
the society was like that of heaven. Whatever 
may be thought of peace or lack of it within the 
church, two thirds of the people did not belong 
to the church. There were then all the elements 
for the average modern life known to our times, 
in our older States. If any image of the Puritan 
woman be set up for her posterity to worship, 
there must be due proportion of clay in the 
image. She seeketh wool and flax, and work- 
eth willingly with her hands ; placidity is in 
the folds of her kerchief ! Not at all so. She 
bustled, and was sometimes fussy, and she spoke 
vanity more or less with her neighbor ; she 
sometimes had grudges, and withal talked now 
and then in a squeaky voice, and settled down 
to mere gossip and kept it up like corn a pop- 
ping, — all this was true of the average fore- 
mother of New England. Challenge not the 
affirmation ; and search not the records. 

At Hopestill’s house it would have gone 
hard with that quilting party to have kept 
clear of matrimonial gossip. That brightest 


HOPESriLL OLDUM. 


33 


and best of the girls, of strong physique, the 
mother of a stalwart race, of full blooded Eng- 
lish stock out of the Merry Home from over sea, 
who had just married Peregrine Wliite, was 
dissected by the gossips, — notwithstanding 
the frowns, the judicious silence, and the half- 
rude interruptions and attempts to guide the 
conversation into other channels, by the Gov- 
ernor’s wife and the more serious matrons of 
the old-comers. 

“ She has married him, has she ? ” exclaimed 
Hopestill. “ She ’s been marrying somebody 
every little while. If she ’s actually married 
now, I ’m glad of it.” 

The daughters of the wise foremothers were 
commonly flattered into the belief that the 
American climate was already improving their 
type of beauty, — that they were less Dutchy in 
appearance than those who came into early 
womanhood in Leyden, and less stout and 
beefy ^ than those who in that healthy age had 
their early homes in England. The sprightly 
girls were made to have no doubt of their good 
looks, and their ability to keep up their end in 
founding a nation of heroes. Of their marriage- 
ability none despaired unless Hopestill. 

3 


34 


AGATHA. 


Easily they fell to chatting of Leyden. Dur- 
ing twelve years their young people had become 
interested in the youth of Holland. The pains 
taken by the Dutch authorities, to secure the 
comfortable settlement among them of exiled 
English weavers, was alluded to ; and the rea- 
sons for their removing from Leyden were 
touched upon. Had they not feared that 
their children might lose their native language, 
and their distinctive English Puritan training, 
and their sense of the sanctity of the Sabbath ? 
But that which was more lamentable, and of 
all sorrows most heavy to be borne, was that 
many of their children — by the great licen- 
tiousness of youth in the country, and the mani- 
fold temptations of the place — were drawn 
away by evil examples into extravagant and 
dangerous courses, getting the reins on their 
necks. 

The women talked of the great kindness of 
the Dutch, some of whom partook of the com- 
munion with them in Robinson’s church ; of 
whom three had come to America, — Godbert 
Godbertson, Moses Symonson, and Jolin Jenny 
to whom they owed it that they no longer 
pounded their corn in mortars. 


HOPE STILL OLEUM. 


35 


Agatha not being present, the great beauty of 
Bernard Anselm was referred to, his well made 
figure, his air of gentility, his pleasing face, 
delicate features, large brown eyes, his agreeable 
tones upon a low key.^ 

It was like touching a spark to tinder, when 
Mrs. Bradford spoke tenderly and kindly of 
Bernard, so recently raised from the grave’s 
mouth. 

Did not Mrs. Tabithay Scadding delight in 
creating a sensation ? ‘‘A woman,” she said, 
“whom I set down at sight to be a Spanish 
Jewess,^ — as I remember to have seen her 
cursed race in Amsterdam, — came to my house 
to-day. Oh, what eyes she ’s got ! They glowed 
just like fire-balls when she called for food. I 
was so much afraid, I durst not bespeak her. 
She partook of corn and beer, and as she went 

1 There is happily a portrait of him, — a gentle, 
womanly face, intelligent, sage-like, seeing far off, 
penetrating, devout, and sad. 

2 It is a matter of great interest that different nation- 
alities, and persons of varied religious training so early 
found their way to New England. An Irishman came 
veiy early into the Old Colony, and two others to the Bay. 
The French came so early as to be reckoned among the 
old-comers or forefathers. 


36 


AGATHA. 


out she handed me money graceful as a queen ; 
but she said, — ^ Let the Pilgrim women beware 
of Bernard Anselm ; he is a wolf in wool/ She 
said it so quiet-like you would have thought her 
an angel. She is, I ween, a fallen angel; or else 
she is possessed of a devil.” 

“ It is sah-d,” uttered the widow Dorcas Wil- 
bore, of Jumping Hill. And she elevated her 
immense horn spectacles, till they looked like 
two skylights upon the roof of her head. “ I 
heer’d there ’s a strange woman in town, sech ’s 
hed lived with five husbands, and war n’t mar- 
ried to eny of ’em. I hav’n’t much respec’ for 
sech.” 

“ Only to think,” chimed in Hopestill, in tones 
of meekness, — “I saw her polluted feet stand- 
ing on our Rock. I fear, however, according to 
all I can hear, that personal impurity may have 
stepped thereon before.” 

Here indeed was a sensation. One who loved 
to unknit neighbors, and concerning whom it 
was common to say that if she would be half as 
stingy of her gossip as she was of her money 
all would like her better, had now thrown down 
the gage of battle. 

The Governor’s wife ceased from her work in 


HOPESTILL OLDUM, 


37 


marking new quilting lines, and said : “ Pardon 
me, Miss Oldum. We are your guests. Do not 
let us backbite our neighbors.’^ 

‘‘I wot that others are in the same pickle with 
him, if you mean Mr. Anselm, that needs back- 
biting,” interposed Mrs. Tabby, who had too 
little the fear of governors, or their wives, in 
democratic Plymouth. She was of the clay in 
the golden image set up to the foremothers of 
New England story. But the gold and the 
silver in the typical image were lustrous in 
that hojr.^ 

“We have all been busy as bees in this hour,” 
said Mrs. Bradford with a smile, and in tones of 
courtesy. “Let us not sting like bees. Word 
has come to us that our neighbors of the Bay 
Colony are nipping off the ears of people who 
offend them. Let not our tongues cut like 
judicial acts. We used to hear, when we were 
children, that if the best man’s faults were writ- 
ten on his- forehead, it would make him pull his 
hat over his eyes. Let us not anticipate the 

1 The official register of the deaths in the Old Colony 
fairly glows, when depicting in simple phrases the esti- 
mable lives of those godly women of whom the world was 
not worthy. 


38 


AGATHA. 


just judgment of God by judging one another. 
Evil thought is sin. The scrutiny of God is 
upon us. Let all evil-speaking, saith Paul, be 
put away. He shall dwell on high that shutteth 
his eyes from seeing evil. Much is true that it is 
not kind, or like our Saviour to repeat. Let us 
not then repeat unkind things, which perhaps 
are not true. Women are sometimes possessed 
of the devil. Do we not ourselves sometimes 
show a demoniacal spirit ? It is more probable 
that the strange woman is moved by a demon 
than that one whom we have long known and 
honored has been guilty of folly. If she be so, 
the authorities will see to that.’’ 

At this moment Governor Bradford came in. 
He had been disturbed by the rumors afloat 
about Rachel ; and however he might differ from 
Mr. Anselm as to Colonial policy, his heart 
was warm toward Elder Brewster’s favorite 
pupil, whom he esteemed dearly as his own son. 
It may have been because Bradford had been 
imprisoned with Brewster in England by reli- 
gious persecution, that it was always easy for him 
to remind the neighbors of the precious memory 
of the sainted dead ; which he now did in such 
manner as to make them thoughtful of the living. 


HOPESTILL OLDUM. 


39 


Upon going home, the Governor and his wife 
were met at their own door by Rachel, — clad 
every way like a squaw, and her face of Indian 
red. 

“ I am Quinemiquet,’’ she said in the Indian 
tongue. “ I am come from Weetamoo,^ with 
whom I live as a daughter. A poor heart-broken 
woman has been now long time with me in my 
wigwam, who has suffered great wrong by Ber- 
nard Anselm. I am here to plead her cause. 
Vengeance can no longer sleep. Our Indian 
people will not suffer it.” 

“I will look into the matter,” was the Gov- 
ernor’s reply. 

The woman then disappeared quickly in the 
gathering twilight. 

So just were the dealings of the Old Colony 
with the native tribes, during half a century 
after the settlement, that no Indian had reason 
to doubt the magisterial word. 

1 The squaw-sachem of Pokeeste, or Pocasset. 


YI. 


THE KINGS OF PLYMOUTH. 

HAT day, sennight, Agatha and her sister 



went to join their husbands at Nauset. 
Meantime they spent their time with Jonathan 
Brewster, at Duxbury, upon a farm next that 
of Captain Standish, in the house where Elder 
Brewster died. Upon the morning of the Sab- 
bath, in Agatha’s attempt to take half an hour 
for contemplating her grounds of thanksgiving 
to Almighty God, — according to her daily cus- 
tom since she had been a little child, — strange 
forebodings filled her heart. But when the sun 
came up, and threw across the fields of ocean 
a bridge of golden light, her devotions be- 
came more cheerful. That she should be in the 
slightest degree moody disturbed her much. 
Her nerves might be undergoing some unusual 
strain. 

But the sunbeams could not long drive out 
of Agatha’s mind the idea which had filled her 
thoughts with gloom ; so that when she walked 


THE KINGS OF PLYMOUTH. 


41 


to Plymouth to meeting, she found herself to 
her own surprise, fixing the features of the vil- 
lage in her mind, as if, perhaps, after a day or 
two she might never see them again. She looked 
at the gentle slope of the hill, crossed by the 
broad street, now known as Leyden Street, from 
crest to sea ; and that street which cut it at 
right angles, from the rivulet to the rising land 
south. She looked half-dreaming at the steep 
roofs of the ten houses earliest built, in which 
there were forty-four deaths in the first three 
months of tlie settlement ; and she listened, as 
if she might hear the story of strange sorrows 
told to the wandering wind by grass spires 
struggling to get free from the thatch. She 
photographed upon her mind the rough-hewn 
planking of the houses, and the stockade in the 
rear surrounding their gardens. She looked at 
the stout wooden gates at the ends of short streets, 
as if she had never seen them before. Then the 
Governor’s house was reviewed, standing in the 
centre of the town, with a square in front which 
presented four guns commanding the streets. 

She saw the Pilgrims come out of their houses 
at the drum-beat, — each with his musket or fire- 
lock. And Agatha joined their company upon 


42 


AGATHA. 


the square. Placing themselves in ranks, three 
abreast, the armed men were led in silent march 
by their sergeant toward the house of assembly. 
The Governor, unhappily, had been called out of 
town upon official duties, but in his place walked 
Elder Experience Tart, who was the teacher, now 
that Elder Brewster was dead. And by his side 
marched Lieutenant White, in the place of Cap- 
tain Standish, then in England. So they moved 
in due order, — the women and youth following 
in goodly array. 

Reaching the hilltop, they approached the 
door of that square house which did them double 
service as meeting-house and fort ; whose flat roof 
of thick planking was supported by heavy beams 
of oak, and upon which were mounted six cannon 
commanding the surrounding country. Entering 
the house, each man set his arms down near him. 

A strange chill struck the heart of Agatha 
as she took her accustomed seat, — although the 
morning was warm, and the windows were open 
to let in the sunbeams and the bird songs to 
charm away, if possible, the gloom of this par- 
ticular Sabbath. 

Pastor Robinson of Leyden was a learned and 
able man ; so much so that the Old Colony — as 


THE KINGS OF PLYMOUTH. 


43 


compared with the Bay and with Connecticut — 
was put to great disadvantage by his failure to 
come to Plymouth. Elder Brewster did much 
toward making his place good while he lived ; 
but after his death ecclesiastical affairs were for 
a time at odds. Bradford was a well educated 
man, of great influence, as were very few others ; 
for the main body, they missed the moulding 
power of Robinson, and his practical wisdom 
in matters requiring delicate handling. Queer 
men for ministers early Plymouth had, in their 
attempt to pick up somebody who had happened 
to come over sea. The brethren at large there- 
fore took much into their own hands. They 
were devout men, and terribly in earnest to fulfil 
life’s mission. And it is certain that their very 
blundering was better than lack of moral force. 

Elder Tart was not always sweet-spirited in 
the hard battle waged by the Puritans against 
the follies of their age. England was not the 
less a merry nation for all their suffering in the 
cause of liberty, civil and religious, and all their 
high-aiming, in the period of the largest emigra- 
tion to America. Fighting-power and fecun- 
dity fitted the Anglo-Saxon race to become the 
mighty mother of many nations. It was a stock 


44 


AGATHA. 


retaining its pristine vigor ; belligerent, and prop- 
agating sea-kings. They dared venture into the 
wilderness. The first child born in New England 
was fined for assault and battery, and for other 
sins which grew out of the wild-beast part of 
his nature. The Pilgrims were thorough-going 
Englishmen, marked by virility, — able to hold 
their own and people the earth. An astonish- 
ing number of children astonished their happy 
mothers in the honey-moon in the Old Colony 
days.^ 

It was a time of almost heathenish immorality 
upon the continent of Europe. England was con- 
stantly shipping cargoes of rakes to the southern 
colonies of America. The Pilgrims of Plymouth 
therefore fought a good fight in protecting the 
purity of domestic life. If they blundered, it 
was indeed lamentable ; that they came off con- 
querors is cause of gratitude to endless genera- 
tions. They sought by enactment to repress 
unholy desires, and to favor angelic aspirations. 

The young people of Plymouth had a gobd 

1 The Plymouth Court orders show that there was a 
reasonable amount of fighting, getting drunk, Sabbath- 
breaking, profanity, and other marks that “the natural 
man ” was in a healthy condition in the Old Colony. 


THE KINGS OF PLYMOUTH. 


45 


time. Innocent pleasures, frolics without end, 
crop out of the old records. And if they went 
beyond rule, their elders — if not their betters — 
had rare enjoyment in bringing to terms the 
lads and lasses, and men not manly. The grave 
record states that Oldham was “a man of parts:’’ 
this was lucky, as it made it easier for him to 
endure the paddling which two rows of solemn 
Pilgrims put upon him with the butts of their 
muskets, as he went to the boat-landing, where 
they bade him, — “Go mend your manners.” 

To accelerate the exit of Mr. Anselm, as 
having been in some former state, not certainly 
but perhaps, guilty of improper conduct, was the 
aim of Elder Tart’s morning discourse. 

Here was Agatha ; and here she must stay. 
It was not a question of nerves ; it was a matter 
of obedience. It was against the law for her to 
absent herself from meeting. 

The brethren assumed that Mr. Anselm was 
morally a leper ; and several spoke to this point 
at the afternoon service. 

Upon the other hand. Captain Thomas South- 
worth arose, and said: “We should be wary of 
the dangers of democracy. The Holy One would 
have us pure as. He is pure ; but when we all 


46 


AGATHA. 


undertake to rule at once, we are liable to act 
inconsiderately and unjustly, — in our attempt to 
rectify one sin, committing another. Many of 
our brethren have gone to the new settlement in 
Nauset ; and some who remain have always been 
great opposites to the plantation, — apt at turbu- 
lence. If our neighbor is unfaithful to those 
eternal principles which underlie the safety of 
the home, he is not to us a desirable neighbor. 
Whether he be of this spirit is, however, a sub- 
ject of fair inquiry, and not of precipitate action 
from one side only, in the absence of the accused, 
without notice and opportunity of explanation or 
presenting evidence. We are Englishmen, and 
demand fair-play in our affairs. By the law of 
Moses, even, a manslayer was entitled to trial; 
and could not lawfully be punished without first 
standing before the congregation in judgment. 
I remember that our teacher in Amsterdam, the 
learned Mr. Ainsworth, who was familiar with 
the works of the Rabbis, used to say that it was 
one of the fundamental principles of the old 
economy, — one out of six hundred and thirteen 
divine precepts in the Law, — not to listen to 
one party in the absence of an opponent; and 
not to put any one to blush in the presence 


THE KINGS OF PLYMOUTH 


47 


of other people, but to reprove him at first 
privately. I understand this to be what the 
Saviour has taught as our rule of action.” 

The elder Winslow, the first of the governors 
of that name, spoke in a low, quiet tone : “ I can- 
not but think, brethren, that God hath a purpose 
to give this land as an inheritance to our nation ; 
we have been so upborne by the presence of 
God and by manifest providences in our behalf. 
Shall we not therefore fear lest we disturb the 
heavenly harmony by our discordant action ? I 
hear now a voice out of the cloud, — ‘ Vain man, 
get behind, and allow Christ to stand in the 
front.’ Are we not to have the spirit of our 
Master? We are members one of another; and 
we are to be kind to one another, and of tender 
heart. Our brother may, indeed, have gone 
astray in his youth. God knoweth. But if it 
were not to be expected that men might err, 
there would be no need of a plan of salvation. 
It is not one act of folly, but the lack of a noble 
purpose, that is degrading to manhood. Peni- 
tence is manly ; we will not grudge God’s par- 
don to our neighbor, nor condemn him without 
an opportunity of repentance, — if he has erred, 
concerning which we have no present proof.” 


48 


AGATHA. 


In spite of all, however, without formal accu- 
sation or hearing, Bernard Anselm was censured 
for immoral conducts The attempt to suppress 
freedom of worship, which tended as they believed 
to dishonor God and endanger the State, — illogi- 
cally claiming it for themselves and forbidding 
it to others, — and to suppress everything savor- 
ing of evil courses of life, by practising injustice 
as to the rules of evidence, was not uncommon 
in the early history of America, — injustice which 
was an echo of that in England in the same 
age. 

Happily for Agatha, she did not confound a 
local church with the kingdom of God, nor feel 
too much disturbed by the on-rush of those who 
acted hastily upon partial information. If her 
husband had erred, it was because he was hu- 
man ; if those whom he delighted to call his 
brethren — in their common attempt to rise into 

^ That a local body of imperfectly sanctified persons 
was sometimes liable to err by prejudice, even among the 
founders of States and those deservedly honored as fore- 
most in good works, appears from the action taken by the 
General Court of Connecticut, soon after the vote of the 
Plymouth church relating to Mr. Anselm, in compelling 
the church at Wethersfield to act upon the common rules 
of fairness between man and man. See Judd’s Hadley, 17. 


THE KINGS OF PLYMOUTH. 


49 


a higher spiritual life — also erred, it was be- 
cause they too were human. 

Kneeling upon the grave of her father, the 
daughter of Elder Brewster turned up the fresh 
sod, and placed under it the copy of the vote 
which had been given to her by the church-clerk, 
with instructions to present it to Mr. Anselm 
“ whenever his health might be sufficiently re- 
stored for him to read it without unsettling his 
reason.” Bernard to his dying day never knew 
but that his standing in the little Pilgrim church 
was good and regular, if not high. 

That Pastor Robinson and her own father 
would have been kind and fair even to the erring, 
in their attempt to win sinners to repentance, — 
instead of breaking their necks, — did indeed 
occur to the wife of Anselm. But she wrote : 
“ I believe it to be by reason of their infirmity 
that our neighbors do us wrong ; I shall be my- 
self infirm, if I bear a grudge against them. 
May God forgive them, as I pray for my own 
forgiveness and pray for my husband:” ^ 

^ Mrs. Anselm’s diary was preserved in the library of 
Cotton Mather; coining to him, it is likely, from Rev. 
John Russell of Hadley. It passed into the hands of 
Governor Hutchinson, and was destroyed or lost in the 
sacking of his house by the mob, in 1765. 

4 


VII. 


NAUSET. 


HEN Agatha set out next morning with 



^ ^ her sister, under the escort of Mr. Ed- 
ward Bangs, for Nauset, in leaving Duxbury 
they passed through Plymouth. Agatha saw 
the form of Rachel, now clad in her Spanish cos- 
tume, hovering near her house like a restless 
spirit of evil.^ In the serenity of her soul 
Agatha was not greatly disturbed at the ill 
omen. She never saw that house again. 

Passing the prison, a little building sixteen by 
twenty-two. Brother Bangs, a modest man who 
rarely spoke his mind, ventured to remark to 
Mrs. Anselm : “ Elder Tart, in the old home, dear 
England, was put into a prison upon less evi- 
dence than that against your husband. Our little 
flock in the wilderness is not so wolfish as that 
church from which we separated. In England 

1 The seven acres allotted to Mr. Anselm were situate 
upon the south side of the brook, toward the bay. 


NA USET. 


51 


the Star Chamber would have deprived your 
husband of his ears upon less grounds of of- 
fence ; only they tackled men on a question of 
tippets, robes, head-gear, and the prayer-book, 
— and rarely touched a man on an accusation 
of immorality.” 

This grim sally was received in the spirit in 
which it was given, — a defence of violent 
neighbors, an attack on the hierarchy over the 
sea, and a jocularity which was indicated by eye 
and tone more than by word. Brother Bangs 
always stood by Anselm. 

The stillness of the morning as they entered 
the forests south of the hamlet was like a voice 
out of heaven to Agatha. Fifty miles of fine 
woodlands stretched before them, well cleared 
of undergrowth by the annual Indian fires. 
Shrubby pines stood in dark contrast under the 
graceful and slender white-birches ; cherry-trees 
and wild plums lifted their heads amid holly, 
hazel, low cypress, and juniper ; the scraggy pitch- 
pines, hung with mosses, were interspersed here 
and there by beech or ash ; and there were wild 
vines everywhere, the grape-leaves half-hiding the 
knurls on many an oak : all this upon that wind- 
swept strip of sand now known as Cape Cod. 


62 


AGATHA. 


Having come over in the same ship with Mr. 
Anselm and'his wife, Brother Bangs had always 
taken kindly to Agatha. He was not lacking 
in glee, although his usually solemn visage was 
not an index in which one looked for fun. 

Having worn away some time in silence or in 
conversing with her sister, Agatha addressed 
their escort by propounding an indisputable 
proposition : “We are, it is plain, still pilgrims ; 
seeking out a countrj".” 

“ It is a move in the right direction,” was the 
reply. “ The most of us were husbandmen in 
the valley of the Humber before we went to 
Holland ; and Plymouth is getting now too 
thickly settled. We really must emigrate, in 
order to get more pasture-land and plow-fields.” 

Sam Hickes now joined their company from 
the Sandwich settlement, — a kind, gruff man, 
of warm heart and little courtesy. He, too, was 
going west to find a new country ; only west 
lyas east in this early emigration, — getting as 
far into the sea as possible. 

“You are, I see,” said Hickes, “leaving the 
good old church in Plymouth. She must feel 
tliat she is growing old early, to be so early for- 
saken of her children.” 


JSTAUSET. 


63 


“ Yes, we have all felt lonely since Deacon 
John Doane left, with his colony,” replied Mrs. 
Prence. 

‘‘The church itself did propose to move to 
Nauset,” added Mr. Bangs ; “ but they think now 
that the Deacon has probably taken up the best 
of the land ; and the tide of migration is on the 
ebb.” 

“ In my opinion,” Hickes rejoined, “ we should 
have done much better to have settled at the 
end of the Cape, or Pamet, in the first place.” 

“ That is true. We went farther, and fared 
worse.” 

Horn-handed were these men, able to give 
hard knocks, and break a new country. Tliey 
passed through the little Indian village Skauton, 
between Sandwich and Barnstable ; and that 
night they spent in a little one-story house in 
the woods near Chumaquid harbor 

The early morning saw Agatha and her sister 
among the wild-strawberry plants. 

^ Where the “ Mary Anne ” shallop would have un- 
doubtedly landed — so forming the first Pilgrim settle- 
ment in Barnstable, instead of Plymouth — if the snow 
storm had not hindered their seeing the entrance. These 
great salt-marshes and fresh meadows would have decided 
the question of location. 


54 


AGATHA. 


From this point they had the company of Mr. 
Thacher, one of the noblest men of all the early 
settlers, — so courageous, so earnest, so true. 
He, too, was to settle in the new town. 

“ We have been long content,’^ he said, “with 
the poor soil of Plymouth. Seeing that by 
God’s providence the place fell to our lot, we 
would not readily leave it, nor languish after 
other places, even though rivers were discovered, 
and places more fertile than where we were.” 

The content fundamental to New England 
character — content in God’s providence, in a 
fair living, not easily moving unless for reason — 
was strong in the heart of Thacher. “ Sweet 
ay re, rich soile, blest seas,” w^ere terms applied 
to poor Plymouth by that harmless Episcopal 
brother who wrote the praises of New England 
in Latin metre, which he was good enough to 
translate for Charles I. 

Appoon, or green-corn pudding, was what Aga- 
tha had for dinner at Yarmouth. Here the sis- 
ters found the first low-blueberries of the season. 

By Cusset and Suet, along the low range of 
hills scattered from Sandwich to Pleasant Bay 
in what is now Orleans, with now and then far- 
reaching views from some height of land, or 


NAUSET. 


65 


again moving along the margin of a cedar 
swamp, they reached Sawkatucket, then Pochet. 
The emigrants were gladdened by the sweet 
air, which was laden with the odor of sassafras 
and balm, laurel, musk-roses, violets, and honey- 
suckles. 

Nauset, soon after named Eastham, was at 
that time the only town east of Yarmouth ; com- 
prising the Cape proper from heel to toe. Now 
bleak, with few trees even in the hollows, it is 
difficult to look upon the Eastham plain to- 
day — its little swells and vales, sand-patches 
and gravelly loam — with the enthusiasm felt 
by the gentlemen Thacher, Hickes, and Bangs, 
and by Mistress Patience Prence, and by Agatha 
Anselm, when they heard the welcome sound 
of the mowers whetting their scythes on the 
Prence farm. 

Bernard Anselm’s thoughts in the hayfield 
had been all day upon Agatha, to whose coming 
he looked as for the day-dawn and its bird- 
songs. He remembered the first time he saw 
her, in the church at Leyden, when all through 
Pastor Robinson’s sermon he cast sly glances at 
her, and saw a blush mantle her face when their 
eyes met. What Elder Brewster’s tuition and 


56 


AGATHA. 


his own studies in the University failed to do for 
perfecting his manhood was wrought by Agatha. 
The wind in the trees was repeating her name to 
him all day long. The beauty of the flowers 
reminded him of her. Her unselfish face, in 
its beauty of health and moral culture, hovered 
about him, until he saw her alight from her 
horse. 

There was something about Agatha always 
fresh and new to the beholder, — as if one were 
gazing upon the rainbow or the perfect tints of 
the morning. The intelligence beaming from 
her face glowed as if it had been kindled by 
celestial fire. 

Fidelity toward her husband had been in all 
her thoughts in the ordeal she had gone through 
in his absence. She did not believe there was 
anything in the cruel accusation. And the in- 
justice manifested toward him made her cling to 
him the more, as he was forsaken by others. 

“It was while we were yet sinners that God 
loved us,’’ Agatha had been saying to herself. 
“ If wrong-doing were to deprive us of all love, 
the earth would indeed be a world of woe.” 

So were the sins of Bernard sunk in the 
depths of the unmeasured sea of Agatha’s love. 


NAUSET. 


57 


But it was of ill omen that, in her visions 
upon the first night in her new home, she saw 
Bernard and the beautiful Rachel walking to- 
gether in their early teens ; only, in her dream, 
the Jewess was dark as a shadow. 


VIII. 


THE PEENCE PEAE TEEE. 

HAT famous pear-tree which Governor 



Prence brought from England was favored 
by the soil of the Cape, bearing fifteen bushels 
of fruit when two hundred years old. This 
honored landmark was set out long before the 
general settlement of Eastham, so that its shade 
was sufficient to shield Bernard and Agatha, 
when they sat together reciting the dismal 
story of Rachel. In it all the wife took so 
painful an interest that it seemed to her as if 
she were relating it ; and that she once- had all 
the experiences her husband had lived through. 

The Rev. Francis Johnson, — who, as agent 
of the English government, burned the non- 
conformist books seized from printing-houses 
in Holland, and who became a nonconformist 
through reading one of the books he had re- 
served from the flames, and who reprinted the 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE. 


59 


edition at his own expense, and who was hus- 
tled out of his living in London by his irate 
bishop, — in ministering to an English congre- 
gation of exiles in Amsterdam, was ably sec- 
onded by the very learned Mr. Henry Ainsworth 
as teacher. In the teacher, who was called the 
rabbi of his age, the boy Bernard Anselm met 
his fate, so far as concerned Rachel. And when 
the Pilgrims from Scrooby lived a year at Am- 
sterdam before going to Leyden, he met his fate, 
so far as concerned Agatha. 

Francis Johnson had married a rich widow. 
She was very devout ; but she wore whalebone 
in the bodice and sleeves of her gown, — and 
she did her street-walking in boot-heels of cork. 
This put the Pilgrims out of joint with her 
husband, and made him much trouble. They 
clung the more sturdily to plain Richard Clif- 
ton, the grave and reverend preacher who had 
come out of England with them. Clifton was an 
old man, having a great white beard; and he 
was loath to move any more, when the Pilgrim 
church removed with John Robinson to Leyden. 
Clifton, remaining in Amsterdam, became ac- 
quainted with the Anselms ; and it was through 
his influence that Bernard finally was placed 


60 


AGATHA. 


under the tuition of Elder Brewster, and intro- 
duced to his confidence. 

The teacher Ainsworth and the pupil Bernard, 
however, knew many things with which Clifton 
never was acquainted, — particularly, about the 
Jews of Amsterdam. The great mercantile 
house of Anselm employed Jews of Portugal in 
their East Indian trade, — Joseph Zapateiro, and 
Abraham de Beja, who had penetrated the East 
in the reign of Alphonso V. A few Jews, under 
Christian names and practising Mosaic rites in se- 
cret, had a footing in Holland before the country 
separated from Spain ; but through the influence 
of the Anselm house and others interested in 
the Indian traffic, Jewish merchants were openly 
and hospitably received. The ^oor once open, 
this people, persecuted throughout the world 
elsewhere, crowded in. 

Ainsworth -was an enthusiast, as to th-e con- 
version of the Jews; and was of such character 
that he was likely to win them if any one could. 
He was a great advocate for giving them free- 
dom; and this won their confidence. Sweet- 
spirited, modest, sociable, amiable, of even tem- 
per, he was the best Hebrew scholar in Europe. 
He prepared a commentary upon the books of 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE. 


61 


Moses, which both perplexed and vexed the Jew- 
ish rabbis. Bradford profited by Ainsworth’s 
linguistic skill, and Bernard Anselm was set to 
study Hebrew with the English teacher. But 
Ainswortli never had the roundabout good sense 
which characterized Robinson ; nor was he so 
well acquainted with human nature. 

With many of these facts Agatha had been 
mure or less familiar before they were pointedly 
brought out by Bernard in their conversation. 
But to her the diamond story was new. 

“ One day,” said her husband, my teacher 
and I — as we often walked the streets talk- 
ing about my studies — were crossing the Dam, 
when he stooped and picked up a great diamond. 
Upon its advertisement, a Jew claimed and proved 
it. In visiting the Jew’s house I first saw Ra- 
chel. Her father was Aaron Levi. He was born 
at Yilleileur, in Portugal. He had suffered by 
the Inquisition; had made extended travels in 
the Indies ; and had become suddenly famous 
among learned men, by the relation he gave to 
that erudite physician, Manasseh ben Israel, — 
whose father, a relative of the illustrious Isaac 
Abarbanel, was then a rich merchant in Hol- 
land, — of his journey from Port Honda to Quito 


62 


AGATHA. 


with the Indian Francis Canicur, conducting 
a mule train. A great tempest alarmed his 
Indian helpers in the Cordillerae mountains, so 
that they confessed their ill-treatment of the 
people of God ; and Francis afterwards con- 
ducted him to the place where a portion of the 
ten lost tribes were still practising the rites of 
their fathers in the South American wilds. 

My father took Aaron Levi into his employ- 
ment. Mr. Ainsworth was poor, but refused any 
other reward for returning the diamond than a 
conference with the Jewish rabbis upon the Old 
Testament Messianic prophecies ; which Levi said 
he would obtain for him, — but he could never 
obtain the consent of the rabbis. The Jews 
from the Peninsula had not yet lost the tradition 
of the great disputation of Tortosa, when sixteen 
rabbis debated in Latin with the Aragonian 
Pope and his cardinals, during sixty-nine sittings, 
extending over a year and a half, — debates be- 
tween parties neither of whom was open to 
conviction, — followed, as it was, by papal bulls 
most damaging to the Hebrew people. 

Mr. Ainsworth gave me Bible-texts to study 
relating to the conversion of the Jews, and their 
restoration to the Holy Land. The despair of 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE. 


63 


ages, lie said, was now giving way to hope. 
The gloomy night of the chosen people was 
breaking into the day-dawn. He urged me to 
attempt the conversion of Rachel. And he it 
was who first suggested to me, and to my father 
also, the project of my marrying the Jewess, — 
a plan for spiritual ends, at the outset, with 
which no spiritual power had aught to do unless 
demonic. 

“ To the conversion of Aaron Levi Mr. Ains- 
worth gave himself with such zeal that the Jew 
professed Christianity, — being disgusted at the 
timidity of the rabbis in refusing to meet Ains- 
worth’s request for a fair discussion. The Jews 
of the whole city were enraged. The old story 
of the conversion of thirty-five thousand Jews 
in one year at Salamanca was revived : and the 
English Ainsworth was compared to the Domin- 
ican monk Vincent Ferrer. Aaron Levi was 
denominated ‘ The Accursed,’ ‘ Marannos ; ’ and 
he was named in the same breath with Pulgar, 
Alvarez, and Avila, the hated officials of Spain 
who forsook Jehovah for papal idolatry. Ains- 
worth was poisoned. 

“Aaron Levi, who believed that the Jews 
were guilty of the poisoning, clung stoutly 


64 


AGATHA. 


to his new faith ; and he bade his daughter 
give heed to the truth. With my father’s 
sanction, since he began to take great interest 
in Levi, I read Hebrew at the Jew’s house 
often upon a winter evening ; and I sometimes 
conversed alone with Rachel, seeking to eradi- 
cate from her mind the false views she had 
gained of Christianity from her mother’s ex- 
perience in a papal country. 

My mother, you know, died when I was 
a mere child. I had no sister. Rachel’s 
mother, Leah, was kind to me. I enjoyed 
going there. I was a mere lad, just entering 
my teens. I was always sympathetic, always 
self-denying, and in my thoughtful childhood 
I had been seized with a sort of mania for 
mending the great wrongs of the world. I 
know this, for I was like my father. I began 
to feel that I had a mission for good in the 
Jew’s house. And my father, busy with his 
gains, and at a loss to know what to do with 
a motherless boy, thought so too. 

Alackaday, Rachel proved a poor pupil. 
She was flighty, fond of finery, taking counsel 
of vanity. I expected her to be more or less 
giddy ; and an ordinary gayety of disposition I 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE. 


65 


did not mind. But the more perverse she was, 
the more I was devoted to her salvation, — as 
I fondly flattered myself. Little did I know 
what I was doing. Rachel was more fascinat- 
ing than any Dutch maiden I had ever met. 
Her mother had not opposed Levi’s conver- 
sion ; and she favored my missionary visits to 
Rachel. Leah was a keen manager, with a 
sharp eye for prospering in affairs. Even then 
I fancied that she was not without intrigue. 

Rachel’s gayety, I need hardly say, made an 
impression upon my Dutch sense. She was 
willing to be admired. After a time, her in- 
ordinate love of display shocked me less than 
at first. Her intense love of amusing the 
passing hour proved contagious. The immor- 
tal part of my nature went to sleep, like hers. 

‘‘ The idea of betrothal suggested by my old 
teacher, that simple-minded saint, and by the 
enemy of all good, was stimulated by Leah in 
ways unnumbered. My father was consulted 
by Levi, who was just embarking for Farther 
India, whence he had but recently returned with 
vast wealth for our house. My father had just 
contracted for further service of great promise 
for mutual profit. 


6 


66 


AGATHA. 


‘‘ ‘ You are but a mere lad,’ said my father. 

‘ Nevertheless, if there are no writings no loss 
is liable. You will soon be older ; and it may 
fall through. Act your pleasure.’ 

‘‘ He looked at it as a tradesman at a Jew’s 
chattel. He was willing to have the Jews enjoy 
their freedom, and to contribute their part to 
the prosperity of our country ; and he would 
like to have them Christianized, — still, they 
were Jews, and times might demand their ill- 
usage. 

“ You are shocked at this. But it was the 
way I was brought up. Your father had clearer 
ideas of what is right.” 

Noting now tokens of pain in the face of 
Agatha, and with his own heart ready to break, 
Bernard bowed his head, saying, — “ How many 
and how great waves of temptation overwhelmed 
me, I can never tell. I have now a sense that 
I suffered unnumbered deaths, in unmeasured 
deeps. There were months in which I was not 
myself. In the company of the Jewess, I lost 
my self-respect and my respect for her. I was 
young, but she was young also. I cannot tell 
you more, or whose fault it was. We exchanged 
words of faith, a plight I have not kept. In the 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE. 


67 


dread day when God shall enter into judgment 
with my soul, I shall shield her and blame 
myself.” 

“ Perhaps her mother was to blame,” inter- 
posed Agatha, now speaking for the first time, 
— noticing the pain tugging at Bernard’s heart. 

“ God judge between that poor girl and her 
mother ; I have no right to blame any other 
than myself.” Bernard paused a moment, 
wiping away the great sweat-drops from his 
forehead, then said : “ I fear that the child’s 
mother was not like the Puritan mothers of 
Leyden; but of that the judgment is not with 
me. I am smitten with the bolts of God when 
I think of my own sin.” 

“ But you were a boy then, hardly of discreet 
years,” apologized the wife. 

“ If I was old enough to do wrong, I was old 
enough to do right,” said Bernard. “But I 
have told you little more than half my story. 
I have not told you how I escaped from the 
toils. My father, at Mr. Clifton’s instance, sent 
me to Leyden.” 

“Concerning that, we will have no conten- 
tion,” said Agatha, in her gladness that so much 
of the story was ended. 


68 


AGATHA. 


“ I must study brevity in my speech,” re- 
sumed Bernard. “ I recalled my early memory 
of Pastor Robinson’s preaching. The serious 
views of life entertained by the Pilgrim church 
in Leyden impressed me. My conscience was 
touched. I was heart-hungry after God. In 
the light of a purer life I could see the con- 
fines of the world of woe from which I had 
escaped. I could not go back to Rachel and 
her mother. Among those Christ-like dis- 
ciples, so self-sacrificing, so full of a happi- 
ness I had never seen before, my life in the 
Jew’s house seemed a mere masquerade; and 
I determined to be a harlequin no longer, but 
henceforth to be about the business of the great 
God. 

“ My eyes were opened to new phases of wom- 
anhood, and my taste was changed. When you 
returned from England, just before I completed 
my studies with your father, I remembered that 
I had seen your child-face in the English church 
at Amsterdam; so near did you come to me 
in my groping and beniglited boyhood. You 
know with what a passion of love my soul was 
caught. You carried my heart by storm ; I 
never quite knew how it was. 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE. 69 

“ Can I, shall I say, Alas for the day when 
I saw you ? Can I say, must I say, that I ought 
to have clung to Rachel? Certainly I ought 
to have done it. I ought to have taken the hell 
I made for myself, my separation from all that 
was holy, rather than have finished the wrong 
I had done her by breaking my word. I was 
trying to climb into a higher spiritual life by 
stepping upon my word of honor. It was a sin 
to try to escape sin that way. It was like doing 
wrong to get a right start. I ought to have 
returned to her, and tried to lead a holy life 
with her, and to win her, — and if all failed, to 
have failed in a right endeavor.” 

Bernard now groaned in anguish ; and his 
face was streaming with tears. In broken voice 
he continued : It soon appeared that by aban- 
doning I did not escape her. Possibly she 
really loved me more than I had thought; 
nay, more than she herself had thought. She 
was at oiir wedding. I never told you. I did 
not see her ; but I saw her shadow. It could 
not have been mere imagination on my part. 
Her hand was raised to forbid the banns ; but 
she was restrained, as I believe, by some minis- 
tering angel, — perhaps it was my sainted 


TO 


AGATHA. 


mother. I ought to have told you at the time, 
but I could not. 

‘‘ I was all wrong ; and I have long wished 
that I were dead. I could have welcomed death 
when I was so sick. But when this daughter of 
her mother appeared to make your life wretched, 
my heart bounded ; I determined not to die, but 
bear my burden with you. My will-force turned 
the disease. 

“ But the pang will never die. I shall carry 
it through eternity, — the great wrong I did 
Rachel.” 

Bernard directly arose and walked toward the 
sea, which was moaning loud below the bluffs. 

Agatha was alone. She did not feel clear 
that God was with her. ‘‘ There is possible only 
one rule of moral right,” she said to herself; 
“ but there may be many variations of intellec- 
tual judgment as to what is right in a given 
case.” She arose, and called to Bernard; and 
she ran after him. Agatha threw her arms about 
his neck, and her eyes filled with tears. 

“I cannot tell you whether you did right,” 
she said ; “lam an interested party. Ask some 
one who does not love you. I was to blame. I 
was so ambitious. It is as natural for spirit to 


THE PRENCE PEAR TREE.' 71 

love as for matter to gravitate. I ought not 
to have loved you ; but how could I help it ? 

‘‘ No,” she added, standing away from him, 
and looking into his eyes, I never loved you 
because I thought you perfect; but because it 
was so ordained of Heaven. I could neither 
help nor hinder it. If you are imperfect, you 
are the more fit for such an imperfect creature 
as I am. We will not jangle about our faults ; 
but take life at its best, not at its worst. 

‘‘ Are we not knit together in a sacred bond 
and covenant ? ” she added, taking her husband 
by the hand, and moving toward the Prence 
Pear Tree. “ Let us not graft apples of discord 
in this first of New England orchards.” 


IX. 


ENOCH’S EOCK. 

' i 'HE Anselm farm was located in that north- 
east portion of the circumscribed Eastham 
of to-day which is still called Nauset. It was 
three or four miles from the meeting-house, 
north of northeast. The harbor mouth was at 
that time farther north than now. Between the 
north arm of the harbor and the ocean, pertain- 
ing to this farm were some two hundred acres 
of salt marsh; and there were about as many 
acres of good corn-land reaching westerly across 
the narrow cape, from the open sea to the great ' 
bay. This land is still the best in the town ; 
and, for Cape Cod, relatively fertile. 

So far as Agatha was concerned, Bernard was 
always in the sunshine ; if any shadow fell across 
his heart, it was from some spectre rising within. 
He looked to his wife as to his better nature. 
Together they re-read the gospel story, in the 
light of the husband’s return from the gateway 


ENOCH’S ROCK. 


73 


of the tomb, and in the light — or the darkness — 
of the return to him of the consequences of 
almost forgotten sins. 

The demands of his ordinary work, together 
with a pressing sense that he must be much 
alone, kept Mr. Anselm out of doors, from early 
morning till night. Agatha was often left all 
day, seeing her husband only in the short sum- 
mer evening ; but the twilight hour was sacred, 
like a daily Sabbath. 

Agatha was commonly much occupied with 
housewife duties. Butter and cheese making; 
roasting and boiling ; the looking after Mordecai 
Fish, the spit-boy and quern-grinder, and Jok 
Whetstone, the dairy boy, — kept Agatha from 
thinking too much about herself. Then there 
was the unceasing demand of the wheel and 
loom. The great merit of doing trivial things 
in a right spirit gave an unspeakable dignity to 
her daily life, — as if hands celestial might be 
found in terrestrial employment. 

The early light entering the small panes, illu- 
minating the rough rafters of this pioneer’s 
home, sometimes found a shadow falling upon 
Agatha, amid her common domestic duties. A 
new element had entered her life ; it might more 


74 


AGATHA. 


and more claim to exercise a controlling influence. 
Even now there were heart-throbs of anguish 
unspeakable. All this was new in her experience. 
There was perhaps no day in which some dark 
thought did not bring its momentary shadow. 

It cannot be better expressed than to say 
that now, for the first time since her marriage, 
there came to her a sense of an indefinable loss. 
It was not loss of respect for her husband. His 
frank-heartedness and right attitude before God, 
in view of his early life, rather increased her 
respect for him. It was, possibly, an ideal that 
she had lost. Bernard was not perfect. It 
might be, it doubtless was, a suggestion from 
demoniacal powers, — “ What else is there in 
Bernard’s heart concerning himself which I 
do not know?” This thought once banished, 
another would force itself upon her attention as 
she was weaving, — a process so purely mechani- 
cal as to leave thoughts free to come and go, — 
“ If he has been false to another, why not false 
toward me ? ” 

But her husband’s infirmities only led to 
self-revelation. She renxembered with deep re- 
proaches the extreme ambitions of her girlhood. 
She would link herself to a brilliant man. She 


ENOCH’S ROCK. 


75 


knew nothing of any other alliance when she 
fastened herself upon Anselm. She was, after 
all, perhaps as much to be blamed as he. Was 
her pride at fault, that she had, unknowingly, 
wrought so great a wrong toward another? 

Again, the flitting shadow was of anger ; she 
could not but resent the violence of a woman 
whom she might do well to hate outright. Then 
the angel of pity removed this shadow; and 
Agatha tried to imagine how she should feel if 
she had been abandoned by her betrothed. 

But the deepest heart-pang she was spared. 
She thought her husband had violated his word to 
Rachel, — that his life with her had been trifling 
and unsatisfactory, and tending to worldly- 
mindedness. That it had any element of posi- 
tive vice in it, that there had been any crime 
against public morality, did not occur to her. 
No lily, set forth by the Saviour of men as the 
unconscious symbol of that beauty of a sinless 
life which is of greater glory than the robe of 
royalty, was more fitting for a parable than the 
Puritan matron Agatha; in that, the highest 
ornament of the world was manifest in her life, 
— a womanhood as stainless of evil thought, and 
pure in heart, as the angels of God. 


76 


AGATHA. 


The whole tone of her soul was — in spite of 
momentary jars hy the incoming of thoughts out 
of tune with her usual mental frame — kept at 
its best by her day-dawn or pillow prayers, as, 
morning by morning, her first waking thought 
was of God. Before she opened her eyes to the 
light, or turned her head upon her pillow, her 
opening thoughts ascended to the Infinite Friend. 
To this, and to her habit of taking at least half 
an hour a day to think over all grounds of per- 
sonal gratitude to God in the circumstances of 
that day, was due much of that spirit which is 
best described when it is said that Agatha’s life 
was the life of a sunbeam. 

Indeed, Bernard, in many a darkened hour, 
when the light of God seemed to be withdrawn 
from him, looked to his wife to see whether the 
celestial illumination was still manifest in her ; 
and sometimes he called her a beam, or ray, if 
not emanating from the Sun of righteousness, 
yet so exhibiting the light divine by direct re- 
flection as to work together with the Light of 
the World in dissipating moral darkness. 

Aside from occasional thoughts, whose flight 
she could no more control than the winging of 
birds over the margins of the sea, the life of 


ENOCH'S ROCK. 


77 


Agatha was so full of spiritual peace that she 
might well have applied to herself the phrase 
of Lady Margaret Hastings, — “ Since I have 
known and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
I have been as happy as an angel.” 

The men and women of the Old Colony days 
could not but be much alone. Agatha’s sun- 
beam life was formed from within, not from 
without ; it was an emanation from her hidden 
life with God. By withdrawing from tumultu- 
ous tattling, and maintaining a sweet spirit in 
solitude, she gained a certain intellectual in- 
dependence, in which personal relations with 
unworthy people became less the source of an- 
noyance ; and she sought to radiate upon all the 
light of her love, as the Infinite Beneficence 
makes the sun to shine upon the evil and the 
good. 

A rock not far from her house was to Agatha 
the locality to which she most resorted, — usually 
at sunrise or a little before sunset, — as a place 
of prayer and thanksgiving. Here she walked 
with God. The name given by her is still 
happily preserved, — Enoch’s Rock.^ 

^ It is between Nauset Light and the harbor, — so nota- 
ble, upon the sandy Cape, as to be easily found. It is 


78 


AGATHA. 


The leading thought in her mind, during all 
her years, was to conform to the mind of God 
by a living union with Him. Here upon this 
spot, looking far over the sea, Agatha lost a 
certain sense of disgrace which came from the 
strife of tongues ; and hid herself in the secret 
of the divine presence from the pride of men, 
and calmly anticipated the award of the Great 
Day. She endured cheerfully the rebuke which 
she concealed from her husband, the slander 
of many, and the shame which might have 
been hard to bear if she had not cast all her 
care upon Him who cared for her. Her mind 
became patient with injustice, as it grew to be 
her settled habit to dwell much upon the eternal 
years. Here upon this rock, she prayed for the 
Plymouth church ; asking God to heal their 
distempered spirits. Here upon this rock were 
seen certain foregleams of the glory of God, as 
if she beheld her Saviour upon the Mount of 
Transfiguration. 

“ Come sickness, come health, come pleasure 

referred to in a note, in “Mourt’s Relation,” edited by 
Dexter, Boston, 1865, p. 45. The Cape Cod map in the 
same book indicates the proximate location of this revered 
landmark. 


ENOCH^S ROCK. 


79 


or pain, sweet or bitter, wet or dry, what- 
ever Thou wiliest, that do I also will ; and 
desire altogether to come out from my own 
will, and to yield a whole and willing obedience 
unto Thee, and never to desire aught else 
either in will or thought. Abounding in hope, 
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The 
3'oy of the Lord is my strength.’’ So she 
wrote upon this precious Pilgrim foundation- 
stone. 

If the blessing of God upon children’s children 
to the third and fourth generation of the pure 
in heart was manifest in Agatha ; if the severe 
Puritan training, holding one sharply account- 
able at the bar of conscience for the very 
thought of sin, had brought forth good fruit, — 
it had, however, this disadvantage: Agatha could 
not understand in the slightest degree the heart- 
promptings of those whose training had been 
diametrically opposed to her own. The fibre of 
Eachel and Leah and their Hispano- Judaic an- 
cestry was foreign to the daughter of Brewster. 
Had she at that time fully known what it was, 
she would, it is likely, have attributed the fever 
in the blood of the Jewess to demoniacal agency, 
— much as the powers of darkness may be sup- 


80 


AGATHA. 


posed to taint life -currents with the disease of 
inebriety. The great laws of heredity were then 
little understood, with their weight of woe or 
weal. The transmission of baleful or whole- 
some tendencies, which modifies the judgment 
of the All-wise Creator concerning the moral 
responsibility of the creatures of His power, 
and leads to an exactness of just dealing un- 
attainable by finite beings, was in the Pilgrim 
days believed to be the direct result of Satanic 
compact, or the beneficent action of ministering 
angels. 

Agatha knew not what beings holy or unholy 
she might have to contend with, should she meet 
Rachel. She had in her own flesh and blood no 
tingling sympathy with the world’s fallen ; and 
could not look upon the moral universe from 
their standpoint. That the Nauset sands might 
be crowded with contending demons, ready to 
waylay the helpless when unguarded by prayer 
and the defending angels, was a part of her 
creed. Had she known the eccentric, perverse, 
and even diabolical mission which Rachel car- 
ried forward as a part of her regular life-work, 
Agatha would, in that hour when she saw Ra- 
chel upon Enoch’s Rock, have as soon spoken 


ENOCH'S ROCK. 


81 


with a hag out of the bottomless pit as to have 
addressed her. 

As it was, she was happily ignorant of the 
depths of human woe ; and she spoke kindly to 
the Jewess. 


6 


X. 


THE JEWESS. 

TT happened in this way : Bernard had gone 
**■ to Tonset Neck across the harbor, to ar- 
range with Deacon Doane about some town af- 
fair ; and Agatha having cleared up the house, 
after the old time fashion, by five o’clock, of a 
summer morning, walked through the pines to 
the Bock, which arose out of the sandy soil less 
sharply than now. She heard the low musical 
voice of Rachel singing a plaintive Hebrew 
melody ; and she hesitated whether to approach. 
Agatha had almost begun to forget her sorrow, 
and to live as if there were no Jewess. Should 
she now go forward, and meet her ? The heart 
of Agatha being as full of light and good cheer 
as the sky over the Cape, she advanced, although 
with some caution. 

As if deaf to all earthly sounds, the myste- 
rious woman sat facing the sea ; the symphony 
of her life accorded, it might be, with far-away 


THE JEWESS. 


83 


harmonies over the sea or beyond the sky, but 
there was in it a plaint of sorrow to which 
Agatha was a stranger. It might not have been 
of despair, or of anguish for sin, or utter loneli- 
ness in the universe of God, but these burdens 
were in the morning hymn which Rachel sang ; 
and there was in it a touch of wild independence, 
of self-assertion, as if the singer were at defiance 
with the moral world, and would wreak upon the 
world vengeance for wrongs unknown. 

As one spell-bound, Agatha maintained her 
concealment in the cluster of low pines, and lis- 
tened to the music, which had floated down the 
ages from far-off lands of Hebrew captivity, and 
which had been modulated by the experience of 
twenty centuries of intolerable wrongs. When 
Rachel arose, and turned toward the west, as if 
about to approach the thicket where Agatha was, 
the Jewess appeared to stand against the morn- 
ing light in a halo of lace and gold, — so care- 
fully had she prepared her wardrobe for visiting 
the home of the Anselms. Agatha, in scanning 
the features of Rachel, could but be sensible of 
the subtile fire in the eyes of the Jewess. 

Rachel extended her beautiful arms, which 
were bared to the shoulder : “ Thou to whom 


84 


AGATHA. 


vengeance belongeth, hear me. Be mindful of 
the low crying of Thine hand-maid. May Ber- 
nard Anselm in this life exemplify Thy wrath. 
May the bolts out of heaven wither his perjured 
soul.” These words were uttered with deep 
emotion. The shadow of Rachel upon the Rock, 
almost touched the thicket where Agatha was 
standing alone. It was noticeable to the wife of 
Bernard that Rachel’s face was marked by 
strong passion, as if coursed by warm, if not 
hot, animal blood ; but all her features were re- 
fined. Her eyes, although now less brilliant 
than when she first observed them, were still 
beautiful ; and Agatha thouglit them fascinat- 
ing, — she could not keep her eyes off the orbs 
of the Jewess. The mobile lips of the strange 
woman again moved, now in gentle accents, — 
“ My vow is upon me. I have no other course. 
I must go to the house of Agatha, and know 
whether she has heart-strings.” 

Emerging from her hiding-place, Agatha met 
Rachel upon the lower edge of the Rock ; and 
upon the Hebrew woman she poured out the 
benediction which was uppermost in her heart, 
— “ The Lord bless thee and keep thee ; the 
Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be 


THE JEWESS. 


85 


gracious unto thee ; the Lord lift upon thee 
the light of His countenance, and give thee 
peace.’’ 

The strange greeting and tones of love melted 
the heart of the Jewess. Rachel had heard no 
kind words, had experienced no affection ; she 
did not even look to God as a Father, a Friend, 
— He was to her solely the God to whom ven- 
geance belongeth. She was so discomposed by 
kindness, as to be evidently put to a loss. 

“ I would not give you pain,” said Agatha. 
“ You must have had sad experiences in life.” 

“ I had grudged the trouble I was taking to 
see you,” responded Rachel. I was merely 
going to tell you a little of the life-story of 
Bernard. I do not see how you can endure to 
live with him. You would not, did you know 
him as I do. But I am sure I have no heart to 
tell you what must be so unwelcome.” 

I had much rather hear you talk of yourself 
than about my husband.” 

Be it so, then, — if you have ears to hear.” 

Rachel now took a diamond from the folds 
of lace crossing her- breast. “ This is the 
jewel which Bernard gave me when we -were 
betrothed.” 


86 


AGATHA. 


I cannot help feeling that it is not quite 
kind in you to accuse Bernard to me.” 

“ Nor was ^ he kind, when he left me no other 
alternative; but it would be to you indeed a 
great kindness, if by me you might gain such 
an insight into his true character that you 
would separate from him,” said Rachel, true 
to her purpose. “I would that for a moment 
you might hear me. My heart is sore, and I 
have no one to whom I can go ; at the least you 
can counsel me, if I tell you my plight.” 

“ My heart is brave this morning,” replied 
Agatha ; “ I will hear you. But you will not, 
I am sure, be otherwise than forbearing and of 
tender spirit, in conversing with me about my 
own husband.” 

Rachel ' bit her lip, but repressed her anger, 
in hearing Agatha tell about her husband. 

“ Yes, I will be of gentle accent, even though 
the heavens thunder to give due emphasis to the 
words I utter.” 

It was hard to tell, certainly hard for Agatha 
to tell, how far Rachel was really like a little 
child burdened by a great wrong ; or whether 
she only seemed so, and had a point to gain by 
it. By the movement of her right hand, it was 


THE JEWESS. 


87 


apparent to Agatha that she would have placed 
her palm within her own, if slightly encouraged 
to do it ; but Agatha could not go so far as that. 
She did not, however, cease to scan the face of 
the Jewess. Rachel’s eyes now appeared to 
her to be innocent and content, and to have in 
them something of the wonderment of a little 
child. 

Perhaps I need more than anything else,” 
resumed Rachel with an air of humility, ‘‘the 
counsel of some one wiser than myself. What 
would you do, if you were in my place ? ” 

“ I could, I know, tell better, if I knew your 
place,” returned Agatha, separating herself by a 
little space from Rachel. “ I should despair of 
being of the slightest service, were I to refuse 
to hear you. And it is right that I hear your 
side of your own story.” . 

“ Upon your wedding-day, which should have 
been my wedding-day,” said Rachel with great 
dignity, “ I was not fully conscious of what I 
lost in surrendering Bernard to you. It must 
be plain that I entertained a great respect for 
you ; knowing as I did that Bernard — aside 
from his treatment of me — was worthy of the 
noblest woman in Holland. I raised my hand 


88 


AGATHA. 


at your bridal, to interpose before the union 
should be made fast. But my tongue clave to 
the roof of my mouth, and I could not utter a 
word. My heart smote me that I should make 
your life wretched. And as for the falsity of 
Bernard to me, I thought that it would be a 
refinement of cruelty should he ever know that 
your knowledge comprehended this part of his 
life, and my life with him. 

“ I prithee do not be impatient with me, if I 
tell you how it was. I had, at the time of your 
bridal, my own home, my father, my mother, 
my little brother ; and I was not without the 
feeling that life was still before me, even in my 
bitter disappointment. My heart was bound up 
with the heart of Bernard ; but I despised him 
while I loved him. I was proud and self-re- 
liant ; and I said that I could — and that I 
would — get on without him. When I saw you, 
I pitied you that you should have to live with him 
and not know the secrets of his heart. But I 
said, ‘ I will not now make your life wretched ; 
perhaps I never shall.’ 

“Was I not born under the star Yenus ? Were 
not delectation, and delight in singing and in 
the use of ornaments, joy, and gladness, the 


THE JEWESS. 


89 


music of the pipe and the lute, precious oint- 
ment, and an honorable bridal all mine, — so 
cast in my nativity ? I did not then feel uneasy 
about my future. But I found that honorable 
marriage was shut off ; that I was the despised, 
the forsaken one. Longing for love, and a 
home of my own, I found, when it was too 
late for repentance and recovery, that I had 
gone too far in my girlhood gayeties with 
Bernard. 

“ No doubt he has told you ; if not, he ought 
to tell you,” she said, raising her eyes, which 
had been downcast, to meet the eyes of Agatha ; 
and raising her voice too, so sharply that it was 
almost shrill. ‘‘Yes,” she said, now subduing 
her tone, and dropping her eyes, “ I went too 
far ; he went too far. Probably we did not 
either of us know any better.” 

“ I do not know what you mean,” interposed 
Agatha, “ nor do I wish to hear blame put upon 
Bernard. Did not your mother keep you within 
her oversight ? ” 

“ My mother was my conscience ; and she was 
willing I should keep the company of Bernard. 
And I thought it was right to do whatever he 
who was ostensibly my religious guide was will- 


90 


AGATHA. 


ing to do. And he guided me to hell/’ she uttered 
with a shriek. 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Agatha, in great 
excitement. 

I mean that a betrothal is the equivalent of 
a marriage. It is of ancient record : ‘ After her 
betrothal a woman was treated as if she were 
married ; and only a formal divorce could then 
dissolve the union.’ By Jewish custom Bernard 
could not then leave me, or in effect divorce me, 
except upon the ground of divorcement named 
by your Jesus of Nazareth. 

“ I am in fact,” continued Rachel, raising her 
voice, and speaking slowly and emphatically, 
with her eyes fixed upon the eyes of Agatha, 
according to the law of God, Bernard’s wife. 
And in you he has taken a second wife. There 
is open to you only one course ; you must aban- 
don him. So God would have it.” 

Agatha turned deadly pale, but moved not. 
Rachel’s eyes drooped, and she hesitated ; as 
one might do who was struggling with a secret 
sense of shame. Then she spoke, in a low 
tremulous voice: “Agatha, if I were to tell 
you the whole of the shameful truth, you would 
know that you yourself have been less a wife 


THE JEWESS. 


91 


to Bernard than I, the rejected and desolate 
one ; since I am the mother of his child, who 
has gone forward to the Judgment to witness 
against us.” 

Agatha, fainting, fell upon the rock. 


XI. 

AN ENGLISH WIFE. 

HEN Agatha revived, the sun was shining 



^ ^ upon her ; but a little cruise of water, 
standing near by upon the rock, was in deep 
shadow. Extending her hand toward the cruise 
she withdrew it, when she observed liow well 
defined was the shadow over that part of the 


rock. 


She remained there long, but Rachel did not 
return. The Jewess had said all that she then 
cared to say. It was now plain to Agatha that 
there was a great gulf between herself and her 
husband in that part of their lives which they 
had not trodden together ; that is, if the woman 
spoke truly. If she spoke truly, Bernard and 
Rachel held opposing views of what was right as 
to breaking their engagement, — she taking the 
Hebrew view, that the betrothal was virtually a 
marriage ; he the “ Christian ” view, that it was 
a matter of convenience or the incoming of new 


AN ENGLISH WIFE. 


93 


loves. But this was not like Bernard’s Chris- 
tianity as Agatha had known it. Was it not 
likely, rather, that the woman’s accusation was 
false ? 

In the solitary place, she went over, step by 
step, all that her husband had related to her 
under the Prence pear-tree. She remembered 
his stout affirmation, that, by all holy obliga- 
tions, he ought to have returned to Rachel ; and 
she now reflected that his narration of the be- 
trothal might coincide with all that was implied 
in Rachel’s recital. Did he not say that, in the 
company of Rachel he lost his self-respect, and 
his respect for her ? 

If the accuser was, after all, truthful, what 
ought the daughter of Brewster to do ? She 
found herself, first of all, a woman. She had no 
idea of surrendering her husband, or of spending 
her time in spinning ethical theories for his de- 
fence wherein he stood in need of it. She went 
home to her spinning-wheel, and to get her 
husband’s dinner, and to entertain Deacon John 
Doane, who was the day’s guest. 

If Agatha found surging up in her heart fresh 
tides of love toward Bernard, still she pitied him 
that he could not have told her all he bore in his 


94 


AGATHA. 


heart, in his memory of the sad years of early 
life. But had he done it prior to their marriage, 
she would have bade him return to the Jewess; 
then Agatha would have been the forsaken, the 
desolate one, — and this would never do. Stir- 
ring among her pots and kettles, and allowing 
her roast to burn, the English woman fell back 
upon her own great love, and upon the Puritan 
doctrine of predestination; and concluded that 
she could not stir strife with Bernard, who had 
ceased not to upbraid himself in season and out 
of season. It was all doubtless of divine order- 
ing or permission ; and she found it impossible 
not to be glad that God had joined herself and 
her husband together. And she believed that 
if the whole truth were known, Rachel was more 
to blame than Bernard. 

When, at sunset, Agatha went to Enoch’s 
Rock for a few moments of quiet before night 
set in, she said quite emphatically to herself, 
“ I am too much of a woman, with heart-strings, 
to give up my husband, — mine under our Eng- 
lish law. I do not herein rebel, and refuse to 
say, ‘ Thy will be done.’ The divine will, as we 
English people understand it, is that if Bernard 
made a foolish match he did well to get out 


AN ENGLISH WIFE. 95 

of it while he could, before he was legally 
married.’’ 

“ But how about the Golden Rule ? ” asked 
Rachel, who had come up behind her. 

The mood of the Jewess had clianged ; she 
was ready for a quarrel, — it was her badge of 
nationality. The Hebrews would have become 
extinct ages ago, had brawls died out and all 
clamor been silenced. 

“ I was perhaps wrong,” she said, in think- 
ing that you did not steal Bernard from me, of 
set purpose. Take your Golden Rule. Suppose 
I had treated you that way. What if Bernard 
had first betrayed, then abandoned you ? ” 

“You are altogether too fast,” answered the 
Puritan Agatha, “ in applying the rule. If I 
could imagine that I were so lost to a sense of 
maidenly propriety and purity as to mislead my 
lover or become a willing party to my own 
shame, I should expect that he would abandon 
me. I would sink myself in the depths of the 
sea, — unless, indeed, in the depths of that great 
deep, the pardoning mercy of God. According 
to your own account of yourself, you departed 
from the manner of the daughters of Israel. 
And if the strictness of the Hebrew custom 


96 


AGATHA. 


had been enforced, you would have been shorn 
of your tresses, your glory of hair ; and you 
would have been taunted by young men and 
maidens upon your voluntary course leading 
you to shame. Do not come to me, claiming 
my husband in honorable marriage, as your 
right by unholy and illegal and accursed wed- 
lock. Go hence, daughter of Levi. If I see 
your face again, the authorities shall seize your 
person.’^ 

The determined attitude of Agatha, who was 
of good height and breadth, and strong in phy- 
sique, might easily have cowed any one else ; 
but to the Jewess, who had no small amount of 
low animal vigor as well as cunning, it served 
only to arouse her wild blood. ‘‘Daughter of 
Brewster, cold-blooded Saxon, it is not by the 
exclusive grace of God if your heart is not so 
hot as a child of the sun. The warm-blooded- 
ness of my father David has not cooled in the 
veins of his race during twenty-five hundred 
years.’’ 

“ I trust, then,” said Agatha, “ that the scald- 
ing tears which the Psalmist shed over his sin 
will yet flow down your cheeks. If Bernard has 
done wrong, he, at least, is penitent. He will 


AN ENGLISH WIFE. 


97 


make right the wrong in every way in his power. 
But it would not make right his wrong to you 
for him to commit another wrong against me. 
And he will not. Repent you of your own sin. 
Every one must give an account of himself unto 
God.” 

Rachel bowed her head. “ Mistress Anselm, — 
if so I must call you, — there was upon Mount 
Lebanon a sweet spring, into which the sun out 
of heaven daily looked to see his own image 
reflected, and over which the birds sang in 
thankfulness to God. A hunter came by one 
day, chasing a roe over the mountains. It 
pleased his fancy, having drunk at the spring, so 
to open the clods that the waters would run 
freely down the mountain-side. A current was 
formed which no man could check. The proph- 
ets of Israel prophesied in vain ; the waters still 
ran down into the silent valley. So Bernard set 
me in an evil course, whose ways are the ways 
of death; and I cannot repent and be as if I 
had never sinned. 

“With you it is different, 0 cold-hearted 
daughter of Brewster. You may draw nigh to 
God, and pray for mercy. But it is not per- 
mitted me who have been devoted to a life of 
7 


AGATHA. 


shame, even to approach the Mercj Seat. It 
is my right only to pray to the Infinite Jus- 
tice, — which will bestow upon me the reward 
of all my sins. I, therefore, pray to my God, 
to whom vengeance belongeth, that He will 
devote to vengeance the human author of all 
my woes.” 

“ If vengeance belongeth unto God,” asked 
the wife of Bernard, why not leave it with 
Him to repay ? Who are you, that you should 
seek to handle the divine thunderbolts ? ” 

These thoughts of vengeance,” answered 
the daughter of Levi, “ are in my heart like 
seeds of fire. It is impossible for you — the 
cool-tempered child of foggy England and 
misty Holland and the sandy sea-coast of 
your new country — to know what is in the 
heart of a Jew, with ages of wrong to avenge, 
and Spanish fire making hot his blood. 

‘‘ Hear me, Agatha ; it may be long before I 
shall again ask you to hear me. My poor 
father is dead. He died cursing Christianity, 
and cursing Bernard. He made me kneel at 
his bedside, and place my hand upon his heart, 
and keep it there until it was stilled forever; 
and he made me seal my vow with a kiss upon 


ENGLISH WIFE. 


99 


his cold, clammy lips. It is a vow that I de- 
vote my life to executing his dying curse upon 
Bernard Anselm ; and (since I must perforce 
live without marriage) to devote my life to 
spoiling those whose passions lead them to 
make a wreck of love and hope and life itself, 
as Bernard did to me. 

‘‘ I shall seem to you, 0 daughter of Brewster, 
like a demon in my strange career ; like one 
utterly lost to a sense of womanly purity. But 
I would,” — and here Rachel burst into a flood 
of tears ; amid heart-broken sobs, she said, — 

I would that there might be at least one 
human heart on this side the great sea, one 
human heart this side of Eternity to which 
I hasten, that will not altogether forget that 
I am still a woman, — weak as well as wicked ; 
my heart weeping under my brazen breast, — a 
woman without home and without hope, devoted 
by a dying father to a life of vengeance. 

“ By my vow, I have no right to lay aside my 
purpose, except by marriage with your husband. 
My strange disappointments have made me 
moody. At some hours, I would take your 
life under the guise of a kindness. Trust me 
not. Hate me not. I cannot even ask you 


100 


AGATHA. 


to pray for me. My vow binds me to fetters 
of fire.” 

Gliding through the forest, Eachel so soon 
disappeared among the shades that she was 
herself like a receding shadow to the eyes of 
Agatha. 


XII. 


SAIXT BERNAED ANSELM. 

LL these things Agatha kept in her heart. 



Why should she further disturb the 
already troubled life of her husband ? She 
put to it her hard English sense, acting under 
the limitations of the Old Colony days, and 
concluded that, partly by Bernard’s fault, partly 
by Rachel’s, and much by the fault of the senior 
Anselm, and of teacher Ainsworth, and of Leah 
the wife of Aaron Levi, a great wrong had been 
wrought, — and that the avenging of this wrong 
had been committed by a malignant spirit, hu- 
man or devilish, to poor Rachel, who, not unlikely 
by the aid of evil angels and unholy alliances, 
might seek to fulfil her mission. Still, it hung 
in doubt, — Rachel might be even yet a proper 
subject of prayer ; and her diabolical work, 
whatever its details, might after all be prompted 
solely by her own feud, which had been intensi- 
fied and fixed by a wicked vow enforced upon 


102 


AGATHA. 


a daughter by her father and mother. If this 
theory should prove the correct one to hold, 
Rachel might reasonably become an object for 
the exercise of a benevolent feeling at least, if 
circumjacent human nature could be found 
capable of exercising it. 

Having so settled her theory as to the Jewess, 
Agatha followed her usual course of life ; and 
her faith in God, and her good works, were 
neither more nor less than they had been. If 
she prayed for Rachel, it certainly proceeded 
from no present faith ; but for her husband she 
agonized in prayer, and believed that Heaven 
vouchsafed an answer. ' 

The Deacon Doane business lasted a good 
while. A great friendship grew up between 
the families. The Deacon was the jolliest of 
all the Pilgrims. And his laughter shook out 
any imps of darkness which may have attempted 
to find a lodgement in the thatch of Mr. Anselm’s 
house, thence to shoot down evil thoughts into 
the heart of Agatha while she was about her 
domestic work. The Deacon was in the house 
to dine at least once a week ; and his wife the 
Deaconess, and their cherubs three, made the 
house lively even more frequently. 


SAINT BERNARD ANSELM. 


103 


The second of the cherubs, ’Siah, Agatha 
sometimes succeeded in borrowing for several 
days. The little fellow was practising to be- 
come a witch ; and spent his time mostly in 
riding the broom or in sticking pins into 
Mordecai. When he could inveigle the spit- 
boy to leave his meats to burn, and enter into 
a grinning-match with him, by making up faces 
at each other through horse-collars, Agatha’s 
mind was fully diverted from unseasonable 
reflections concerning the chagrins of her 
domestic life. 

The Anselm farm was rich in good neighbors. 
Richard Hinckley and Reuben Hallet were often 
at the house. Mr. Anselm entered into a ship- 
building project with John Barnes, Thomas Wil- 
let, and Mr. Prence. The barque was built from 
timber grown on the Cape. Agatha estimated, 
in no grudging spirit, that the various dinners 
discussed while the “ Ariel ” was on the stocks 
would have provisioned her for a voyage to Am- 
sterdam. But Bernard’s share in William Pad- 
dy’s fishing stage at Sagaguash proved to be 
very profitable ; and, in his solitary wanderings 
along shore, he had the most extraoi’dinary luck 
in finding blackfish aground in the shallow 


104 


AGATHA, 


waters of the bay, — sometimes scores or even 
hundreds of them; so that he made something 
in a variety of ways toward repairing his late 
losses, and it was easy for Agatha to keep her 
house open to hospitality. 

Besides, the farming held out good promise. 
Nauset, in fact, proved to be the granary of the 
Old Colony. The land worked easily and the 
yield was great. Food was abundant and cheap. 
The cheery neighborhood, and the domestic light 
in his home, could not keep Bernard from spend- 
ing his hours much abroad. Israel Crabtree 
took no small part of his time. He was the 
foreman, who lacked in forethought and in exec- 
utive qualities ; who was, however, smooth as 
butter and devotedly pious. 

It might have been almost suspected that Ber- 
nard Anselm was ill at ease with himself, — if 
his wanderings were in proof. He appeared to 
have a new jaunt for each day, some business 
unexpectedly urgent, — perhaps at Weeset, or 
even Potanumaquut ; or it might be in the 
opposite direction, toward Indian Brook, — 
whither he dragged poor old Abraham Hacke, 
who was set to work to chop down the forests 
in order that the Cape might blow away. For- 


SAINT BERNARD ANSELM. 105 

tunately, wherever Abraham worked, the oaks 
and pines kept the country well timbered in 
spite of him. 

The sandy reach along the west side was a 
mile wide at low-water. Bernard often walked 
there in his outlook for stranded blackfish, and 
winrows of kelp, which he was the first to use 
as a fertilizer. He sometimes crossed Boat 
Meadow River into Shaket, and extended his 
perambulations to Rock Creek. His most deso- 
late walk was along the old beach, if it be an 
old beach, — that strip of desert, some half mile 
wide, which extends perhaps four miles from a 
northerly point to Great Pond, thence south-east 
to the Town Cove, — seventeen hundred acres 
absolutely devoid of vegetable mould, stripped 
by the wind more likely than washed by ancient 
seas, — a fore-token of the desolation of later 
years. 

Now and then, it is said in the old tradition, 
Bernard, in his deepening desire for solitude, 
penetrated the great swamps in Truro. And 
the short natural ditch known as “ Jeremiah’s 
Gutter,” through which the tide has sometimes 
swept across the Cape from sea to sea, is 
associated in the old story with the name of 


106 


AGATHA. 


Anselm ; who seems to have had many days of 
sadness, like the weeping prophet. Gloom more 
frequently than glee went with him in these 
varied errands or explorations. Indeed, usu- 
ally he had no other companion than his own 
reproachful thoughts. 

It was probably to gain a sort of mechanical 
help to being alone, that Bernard often went 
down and travelled the sands on the back side 
of the Cape. Or he moved over the white- 
breasted sand-dunes, amid their lines of beach- 
grass, the shad-bush, or bear-berries. Thence 
he gazed over the moving meadows of the 
ocean ; or listened to the voice of the waves, 
calling upon the lonely shore ; or he chased the 
flying sand. There must have been much of 
the Hollander in Bernard’s saturnine tempera- 
ment. Tlie gravity of the sea was attractive 
to him. 

He had sober thoughts many a day, when 
walking alone, — wearing, as he did, the fetters 
long since forged by his own foolisliness. He 
had never ceased to remember the bright dream 
of his youth, when his beloved but indiscreet 
teacher aroused his mind by high ambitions to 
forsake the calling of his father, and prepare 


SAINT BERNARD ANSELM. 


lOT 


himself for distinctive religious service. The 
old stories of St. Bernard and of St. Anselm 
had at one time promised to be repeated in his 
own life. To rule the empire of the world’s 
conscience had seemed to him a worthy ambition. 

It is difficult in these days — when so many 
avenues are open to men of intellectual force — 
to understand the attractiveness of the clerical 
calling to the world’s ablest men, in an age not 
distant. The military, mercantile, and clerical 
pursuits were foremost ; and commerce in the 
day of Bernard offered less honor, if more wealth, 
than even the Protestant ministry. Of increased 
wealth, that generation of the sons of the An- 
selm house stood in little need ; and Bernard, 
the youngest, intended to become a clergyman, 
as his oldest brother, Antony, had become a 
jurist. 

Aside from the honorable ambition that 
prompted him, Bernard had a natural taste for 
ethical studies, inherited from his mother ; and 
an equipment of conscience unusual in the son 
of a tradesman of that age. That he might look 
to be of service in handling the moral world, 
that he might have leisure for such favorite 
studies as would increase his personal power. 


108 


AGATHA. 


that he might be one of the order of God’s 
nobility, that he might disseminate a knowledge 
of the truth as against heresies unnumbered, 
that he might bear a part not unworthy in 
heralding the reign of God, — all this, a thought- 
ful person would have looked for in seeing the 
face of Bernard Anselm, appearing as it does 
to so marked a degree in the portrait that has 
come down to us. 

Now, alas, at the world’s crest, in the age for 
which all ages had been waiting, Mr. Anselm 
had found himself not fit for the place Provi- 
dence had prepared for him ; his conscience 
would not allow him to take orders. No won- 
der if he wandered, sometimes aimlessly, over 
the Cape Cod sands, — calling up the memory 
of perished hopes. Now, as never before, came 
to him the true meaning of the sharp-edged 
morality of the New Testament. Had he not 
in his earliest years prided himself upon his 
uprightness, and made a merit even of his humil- 
ity with which he had always been heavily bal- 
lasted ? That he had been not only upright, but 
humble in it, was indeed a matter worthy of 
pride. The notorious violation of the Golden 
Rule in the one slip of his youth caused him 


SAINT BERNARD ANSELM. 


109 


therefore untold anguish, as well it might. Was 
not the enormity of the wrong the greater by the 
contrast in which it stood with all else that per- 
tained to his life ? 

He reflected, — when looking into the depths 
of a pictured pool, which imaged the beauty 
of the circumjacent world, — that his mind had 
never been susceptible to certain temptations ; he 
had never been tempted to steal, or to commit ex- 
cess in strong drink. But a frightful gust of pas- 
sion had once disturbed the serenity of his soul, 
— like the wind-flaw which now suddenly tore 
the surface of the placid waters, and agitated the 
cresses for which he was reaching. Venomous 
thoughts, like reptiles, had emerged from the 
secret windings of his heart, — even when he 
was a pious lad. Of all the reasons for mar- 
riage, related to him by Ainsworth, out of the 
rabbis of Israel, — passion, wealth, honor, and 
the glory of God, — he had chosen the worst 
rather than the best in his unholy alliance with 
Rachel. His ideal of uplifting her to the same 
moral plane with himself had been miserably 
destroyed. He had gone down to her level, if 
indeed she too did not sink the deeper for being 
of his company. If he had seasonably rejected 


\ 


110 


AGATHA. 


her, and taken the hand of Agatha in legal 
marriage, was it not because the highest of the 
rabbinical motives had finally obtained sway in 
his soul ? 

Bernard flattered himself that he was, morally, 
far superior to the Jewess, — better, he might 
say, than an outcast ; but recent events had 
brought him face to face with his former life. 
“Were the course which I took made the rule,” 
he said, “ there would be no such word as home ; 
and the earth would be hell.” Then he re- 
flected that the veriest scapegrace in the Colony 
would bolster himself up in sin, if he were to 
know that Mr. Anselm had once gone astray. 
Then he tried with morbid curiosity to imagine 
his future shame, whenever his sin should find 
him out. 

He recalled those cases of abandonment of the 
betrothed by his acquaintance which he had leaned 
upon in self-justification, — by young clergymen, 
by learned professors, by jurists whose charac- 
ters should uphold society and make it tolerable 
to live in. Kising out of the darkness of almost 
forgotten years now appeared the form of the 
cruel wrong he had wrought. It came with 
irresistible force, like the swell of the sea up- 


\ 


SAINT BERNARD ANSELM. 


Ill 


heaving, — no man could stay it. “ Many a 
reputed saint walks the earth to-day,” said Ber- 
nard, gazing out upon the dreary sands and 
the unfruitful sea, “ wearing a girdle of pitiless 
thorns unknown of men.” 

Bernard listened to the bellowing sea ; saw 
it gore the beach, tossing up the sand. ' His 
mind was agonized by the memory of his own 
guilt ; and over him there fell the foreshadow 
of retribution, like the storm-clouds gathering 
on the horizon. 

. In the solitude of his anguish he moaned, that, 
upon this subject, he could not exchange words 
freely with his wife. But could he not at least 
shield her from the avenging Jewess, with whom 
it might have become a life-study to visit upon 
him fit punishment? Would it not however be 
just, if all of Rachel’s intellectual forces were 
directed to this, — if God had appointed her to 
this mission ? How then could he preserve 
Agatha from sharing his own woe ? 

Then, standing upon the height of the hill of 
sand, facing the black cloud rising out of the 
sea, he wondered that his own conscience could 
have been so long silent as to the possible career 
of the outcast. And now, for the first time in 


112 


AGATHA. 


many years, he pictured to himself Rachel as 
he last saw her. He had only heard her voice 
when he was dying ; when she called him back 
from the realm of spirits. He had seen only 
her shadow upon his wedding-day. The last 
time he had seen her despairing face was when 
she sat by the grave side, showering her tears 
and her kisses upon his dead child. 


I 


XIII. 


RAKIXG THE SEA. 

XT REAVING her garland of beach pea-blos- 
^ ^ soms, Rachel, with downcast eyes, was 
stealing along the silent sands between the 
dunes and the waves. It was a solitary path, 
very narrow, under the sand-bluffs a hundred 
feet high, upon the back side of the Cape. 
When the tide was full, and a storm raging, the 
rollers broke upon the very slope of soft sand. 

It was a fine day, but a heavy sea running. 
The plunging of the surf, the unceasing roar, 
the glint of innumerable waves tossing to the 
sun, both expressed and heightened her sense 
of wild despair. Her face often wore a hopeless 
look when she was alone. Why not ? Had not 
all her Old World acquaintance turned against 
her ? And dire was the duty bequeathed by her 
father. Her sad face brightened and her mind 
acted normally when she was in others’ com- 
pany, or when exercised by religious emotion. 

8 


114 


AGATHA, 


When alone, the only hope of which she was 
conscious was the vain hope that she might 
even yet in some mysterious turn of affairs live 
as Bernard’s wife. 

The yearning for a home, — a sense of the 
relative homelessness of the life she had led 
with her tender and severe father, and with 
her strange mother, — the bliss and chagrin, the 
inexpressible joy and sorrow of her acquaintance 
with Bernard, had not yet died out of her heart. 
Her face sometimes kindled with the thought 
tliat, could she but once more meet Bernard 
alone, he would at least be kind to her. If he 
had been hard and cruel, it was when separated 
from her. 

Timidly, with downcast eyes ; with love more 
than revenge uppermost in her heart ; of more 
tender spirit than common ; dreading to meet, as 
some time she must meet him, — she was steal- 
ing along the silent sands towards the very spot 
where Bernard was standing with his rake and 
basket. Witli haggard eyes she saw the fisher- 
man, as she supposed; it might be old Uncle 
Abraham Hacke for aught she knew, — whose 
acquaintance she had made in his leisurely 
chopping. 


RAKING THE SEA. 


115 


Bernard, that morning, had said to Agatha : 
“ I am going down to rake the sea this morn- 
ing.” Upon the back side of the Cape, where 
he was to walk, kelp was scarce ; but a hand- 
rake, in lieu of a staff, was often convenient. 
And a small willow-basket could frequently be 
filled with spoils of the sea, — with clams, if 
nothing better offered. Bernard had made vari- 
ous finds along the sea-margin ; perhaps, now 
and then, the dogfish driving a shoal of cod in 
shore, so that they would tumble out of the high 
billows, ready for raking into a winrow high up 
the sands. 

When accoutred for his solitary ramble, Ber- 
nard presented no great attraction to the eyes of 
Rachel ; as he must have been made conscious, 
when their eyes met. If a slight scorn blazed 
out from the dark eyelashes of the Jewess, it 
was only for the moment. Mistress of a thou- 
sand arts, inherited from generations of beautiful 
women of the Hebrews in Spain, Rachel yet 
had no such control of her features, her accents, 
her movement of person as to hinder Bernard 
from discovering that he was, in spite of all 
wrongs, still beloved of the Jewess, — a phase 
for which he was little prepared. 


116 


AGATHA. 


She stood before him, poising timidly, first 
upon one foot, then the other ; and Bernard was 
silent, first nervously fingering his rake, then 
setting down his basket. 

“ Were you not wise, 0 Bernard, to deem me 
light-headed in those sad years in which you 
sought to instruct me in the religion of your 
fathers ? But I was not false-hearted. Nor do 
I accuse you for leaving me. No one knows so 
well as I that it was your father who violently 
tore you away from me, and gave you as a prize 
to an English maiden, and sent you over the sea.’’ 

Bernard, always a little slow of speech, was 
hardly ready with his answer. He had not 
expected to meet her on this tack. 

“ You thought me,” added Rachel, “ light- 
hearted as well as giddy. But your strange sep- 
aration by your relentless father taught me, 
when too late, how much I really loved you. 
From you I had learned to be better than 
myself. To you I had begun to look for inspira- 
tion in a nobler life. You were becoming to me 
more than my mother, in shaping my destiny. 
I was but a child ; and you would have made me 
what you sought to make me, — a Christian 
woman, worthy of you, — could you have had but 


RAKING THE SEA. 


IIT 


a little more patience with me, — nay, had your 
father but allowed it. Oh, Bernard, I could not 
blame you ; I do not blame you. 

“ You were under age, and could not act freely. 
But it is not now too late. My great sorrow has 
sobered me. I am not the same Rachel whom 
you left. I am more womanly, more spiritual. 
When our little child was not, because God took 
him, I ceased to be a giddy girl and became a 
matron. Then, when hope should have been 
at its highest in my heart, you never returned to 
me again.” 

Still Bernard’s thoughts were slow to open his 
lips. Could he speak of love ? Could he speak 
with Rachel ? What else was she than the ghost 
of a dead love rising out of the dishonored grave 
into which he had thrust her, after he had used 
and abused her ? 

“ Had I not learned pity from you,” continued 
Rachel, “ I should have forbidden the banns 
when you took poor Agatha by the hand in the 
church at Leyden. But how could it be in my 
heart to bring down a thunder-cloud upon her 
pure bridal morning ? At that time, even more 
than now, I felt that perhaps I had been in the 
wrong, — that I was undeserving of you, — that 


118 


AGATHA. 


the Holy One of Israel had interposed his decree 
as a bar to our union. But what am I now ? 
Oh, Bernard ! I am ruined, I am lost without 
you. You are the only man upon the globe 
upon whom I can look without shame. For you 
I lost my place in the ranks of marriageable 
women. Was it right for you to abandon me ? 
Is it right now for you to refuse speech with 
me?’^ 

‘‘I do not refuse to converse with you,” an- 
swered Bernard, in a low, subdued tone. “I 
did you unspeakable, irreparable wrong. And I 
did worse wrong to leave you. To you I ought 
to have clung ; even though, as the result of it, 
we had walked together in the broad path to 
perdition. Rather, whatever manhood I was 
master of should have been devoted to the task 
of saving you and saving myself in your com- 
pany. I cannot tell you, Rachel, how my heart 
has eaten itself in sorrow for the first wrong I 
did you, and my second wrong in leaving you. 
I have no excuse. I believed then, and I believe 
now, that with my temperament we should have 
walked in moral bewilderment all our lives and 
in ages to come, had we continued to keep each 
other’s company. Little did you know me in 


RAKING THE SEA, 


119 


that far-off time when we were foolish children 
together. I did not know myself then, or how 
coarse and animal-like was my nature. I needed 
different surroundings for my own personal sal- 
vation. And I selfishly sought it. I fled your 
mother’s house and your company as from 
out the edge of a quicksand opening into a bot- 
tomless gulf. What I ought to have done was 
to have fled from myself, and have become a 
new man ; and, then, clung to you. Now it is 
too late. Rachel, it is too late. I do wrong to 
Agatha to converse with you. Would to God 
that I might make good the goreat wrong I have 
done you.” 

Rachel was now silent. She had not thought 
that Bernard would so confess his great wicked- 
ness. Standing for a moment, gazing far out 
over the blue waves which were tossing and 
tumbling as if moved by a heart that would 
never be at rest, she said : “ You are married. 
But our own betrothal was treated as the equiv- 
alent of a marriage. You are by the law of 
God, by moral obligation, my husband. It would 
be right for you to be faithful to me, if I claim 
it of you, — even now. If you have taken to 
yourself another, it is a complication which you 


120 


AGATHA. 


have wickedly made; and this cannot, in the 
eyes of God or of your own conscience, release 
you from your primary obligation to be faithful 
to me alone, even unto death. Was it not for 
this, that I, your betrothed, placed myself at 
your feet, as if I had been then your lawful 
wife ? And did not God set his seal upon our 
lawful union in the birth of our child ? 

Then there was a long silence ; and the rest- 
less heart of the ocean was moaning, and beat- 
ing upon the shifting sands. Bernard hid his 
face in his hands ; and his cheeks were wet with 
tears. 

“You know very well, Rachel,” he said, in 
slow and measured tone, “ that there is now no 
way in which I can make right to you the wrong 
I have done. It cannot be done by my betraying 
Agatha also. I did wrong to love her, to marry 
her. I ought to have held myself true to my 
word to you. Words, and even wicked acts, of 
plight like ours ought to have been observed in 
eternal faithfulness, even if pledged in thought- 
less youth. Against heaven, and against thee 
have I sinned; for which God holds me to 
atone. If I make good my peace with Him, 
and if toward you I repent, how can I toward 


RAKING THE SEA, 


121 


you bring forth works meet for repentance ? By 
anything you command, save that I sin against 
Agatha. I have loaded myself with double ob- 
ligation, where there should be but one. What 
can I do ? 

Rachel was silent. 

“ What can I do ? ” Bernard still asked. 
“What can you do? I know not what you 
can do, save to live to God as best you can 
without me.’’ 

This was too much. “Do you,” exclaimed 
Rachel, in an angry tone, “ speak to me in the 
name of the Eternal ? How dare you to pollute 
His name by lips that are traitors to the truth ? ” 

“ Mere money,” continued Bernard as if he 
had not been interrupted, “ is despicable toward 
making right such great wrongs. But if you 
want it, you shall have it, — to the extent 
of beggaring me. Can it serve you to receive 
it?” 

“ Proper aliment is due me by our law, if you 
put me away ; much more, if you put me away 
without cause. I should indeed belittle my 
wrongs, if money could pay for them. But,” 
added the child of thrifty Jacob, “fine gold 
never comes amiss.” 


122 


AGATHA. 


‘‘ If I bid thee farewell,” said Bernard, “ I trust 
that your life will be that of a daughter of the 
true Israel of God.” 

‘‘ What ! preaching again ! ” exclaimed Rachel, 
the hot blood of her race burning her cheeks, “ I 
will have no moral advice from my betrayer. 
By the sorrows of my mother, I would sooner 
that you fill my heart with flakes of fire than 
that I should hear you talk of God and Israel. 
If my mother had taken you in hand when you 
were a boy and shaken sin out of you, you would 
have been more fit for a preacher.” 

The Jewess appeared straightway to add to her 
breadth of shoulder, and to heighten her stature. 

“ Did you not know the secrets of my mother’s 
art,” she said, extending her right arm toward 
the zenith, and looking into the depths of heaven, 
“ I would call upon the powers of the air to 
curse you. I make no doubt that you shield 
yourself, upon the ground that there were no 
writings at our betrothal. My father, an Isra- 
elite indeed in whom there was no guile, said 
that he had become a Christian ; that you 
were a Christian ; that your crafty father was a 
Christian, — and that our betrothal should be 
Christian, and expressed only by word and gift. 


RAKING THE SEA. 


123 


It was Christian, with a vengeance. When was 
a Christian true to a Jew? Your betrayal of 
me was very like a Christian. 

‘‘ Bernard Anselm, I swear to you by the tears 
of my mother, — who sharply quarrelled with 
my father for not putting the writings in Jewish 
form and custom, that, by our law, I am to-day 
your neglected wife. I have never been put 
away by divorce. It is you who have commit- 
ted adultery and married another wife, — for 
which God out of High Heaven will bespeak you 
in seven thunders. My mother, in her gray hairs, 
clings to life only that she may curse you. Had 
a ‘ Christian ’ merchant so much religion as a 
Jewish dog, I should have my husband restored 
to me. By God’s law you are under ceaseless 
obligation to cleave to me alone. ‘ The altar 
itself weeps,’ saith Eleazer, ‘ when a man divorces 
his wife.’ You had no cause. It was you who 
broke the commandments of God by taking an- 
other wife. Morally, in the sight of God you are 
not other than a leper.” 

From speaking in a high key, Rachel now sud- 
denly lowered her voice ; and dropped her eye- 
lids. “ Bernard Anselm, it was for you that I 
flung away my womanhood. I cannot retrace 


124 


AGATHA. 


the steps I have taken. No one will befriend 
me. Until now, I have not been without linger- 
ing hope that the whirlblast of passion that 
whirled you to Agatha might whirl you back 
again. But you dragged me into the pit ; then 
stepped upon me, in order to climb out yourself. 
I was frivolous, but I did not deceive you. I 
loved you, I trusted you ; and you betrayed my 
trust. 

“ Oh, Bernard, do you not look upon me with 
pity, as with horror I recoil from that gulf into 
which the path I am treading will lead me ? I 
am lost, now and world without end. Enduring 
the tortures of perdition, how can I but cry to 
God that hell may be your portion; that the 
pure-minded Agatha may enter into bliss with- 
out you ? But until you enter into the world 
of woe, I shall not cease to haunt you. Ber- 
nard Anselm, remember the days of darkness, 
for they shall be many. When in your proud 
life with another woman, you think of poor 
abandoned Bachel, will it never disturb you 
to reflect that the wicked one is what you made 
her ? ” 

Bachel now hung her head, as if not insensible 
of shame. 


XIY. 


QUINEMIQUET. 

T3 ACHEL’S ability to make herself at home 
among the Wampanoags was inherited 
from her father, — from whom she took her wild 
wandering habit of life. Aaron Levi had been 
of ready tact to make friends among savage peo- 
ples in South America, and in the East Indies, — 
everywhere, indeed, except among the barbar- 
ous tribes of Christians then settled in Europe. 
The Indians of New England prided themselves 
upon their knowledge of human nature, — by the 
eye, judging character. The youthful Rachel 
was so friendly to those whom she claimed as 
her brethren of the ten lost tribes, that she 
soon made for herself a position, which she 
could maintain in carrying on her war against 
Anselm. 

Stoical, whimsical, not willing to be under the 
restraints of society, the Jewess, not many gener- 
ations out of the Pyrenees, made a respectable 


126 


AGATHA. 


Indian, — whom the Colonists might not disturb 
without reason. Of chaste carriage — the pink of 
propriety — among the Wampanoags, the red men 
were not willing to hear her evil spoken of by 
the whites; it was mere race prejudice, they 
said. Weetamoo and her husband, Wamsutta, 
were devoted to the Jewess ; who put on a girl- 
ish habit of modest obedience, and thoughtful- 
ness of others, quite to the mind of the son of 
Massasoit and his squaw-sachem. 

The home of Weetamoo, at Pokeeste, was upon 
a high hill near the shore, across the bay easterly 
from Mount Hope. In the number of her men, 
in territory, in corn lands, she was the equal of 
any sachem in the country, — greatly esteemed, 
and of great authority. Wamsutta, waiting the 
sachemship of his father, did well to marry her. 

A severe and proud dame she was ; bestowing 
every day in dressing herself near as much time 
as any of the gentry of the land ; powdering her 
hair, painting lier face, adjusting her necklaces or 
the jewels in her ears, and bracelets upon her 
hands. When she had dressed herself, her work 
was to make girdles of wampum and beads.’’ 

In her Indian home, Quinemiquet, as Rachel 
was called by her foster-mother Weetamoo, was 


QUINEMIQUET. 


12T 


a model not only of behavior, but of industry, 
as was most fit for an Indian girl, — plying her 
hoe (the shell of a large sea-clam fastened by 
twine of elm-bark to a handle of maple) in the 
light quick soil ; weaving baskets out of wild 
hemp, husks of maize, silky grass, rushes, or 
even crab-shells, — inworking them with images 
of fishes, birds, or flowers ; or making mats of 
sedge, bulrush or flag. Never despising her 
task, the artful Quinemiquet — to whom it was 
needful to have a home near the object of her 
savage revenge — would sometimes lug venison 
with the other women, or travel far with a heavy 
weight of lobsters at her back. Cleanly to a 
degree little known to others, of hospitable and 
friendly spirit toward all, and sufficiently obsti- 
nate and self-respecting to suit the Indian sense 
of fitness, this foster-daughter made herself a 
favorite with Weetamoo. Her love of admira- 
tion, of gaudy, perhaps tawdry display, was not 
against her among the Indian women. Her 
need of affection, satisfied in the simple love of 
the matrons and maidens of the forest ; her own 
spirit of kindness ; her hearty appreciation of all 
that could be loved in the Indian character by 
the most ardent and self-sacrificing philanthro- 


128 


AGATHA, 


pist, — made Rachel as much at home in Pokeeste 
as her uneasy spirit would allow. 

Having become an adept in the Indian art of 
concealment, she sometimes produced, after her 
long and unexplained absences, the most aston- 
ishing variety of gorgeous colors in apparel. 
There were no sumptuary laws among the Wam- 
panoags. A yellow silk kerchief twisted like a 
turban, and worn about the woods, did not raise 
the constable. But the wily Jewess was careful 
not to excite the jealousy of the Indian women 
by display. If she saw sparks of fire flashing in 
their eyes of jet, she bestowed her garment upon 
some squaw whose friendship she could depend 
upon in an emergency. 

It was Quinemiquet who dressed the long 
black hair of her Indian mother, interweaving 
threads of silver and gold; who finely dressed 
her sleeves of moose-skin; who brought to her, 
from some region unknown, a blue cloth mantle, 
which she exquisitely wrought with beads. And 
Rachel — sad at heart, the despised one, who 
lived only to wreak vengeance upon the head of 
her betrayer — made Weetamoo’s wigwam gay 
with dancing and song. So she made herself a 
secure abiding-place, and fast in the affections 


QUINEMIQUET. 


129 


of a power which would be respected by the 
Pilgrim Colony, and with which even Bernard 
Anselm would hesitate to quarrel. 

Rachel’s embarkation for America had occurred 
soon after the death of Aaron Levi, wliich took 
place not long after Agatha’s marriage. With 
that careful attention to what was to be hence- 
forth her life’s business, the daughter of Levi 
not only made herself an ordinary home among 
the wild tribes, but in the course of time acquired 
great influence. 

At the outset she professed herself a religious 
missionary, — not to convert the barbarians to 
any different faith; but, claiming them as the 
lost tribes of her own nation, she would learn 
of them, — and make known to them her own 
faith. She never shocked their prejudices, but 
adapted herself to them. 

The ten tribes, she told them, who had been 
lost out of her nation many ages since, were 
believed by many of her people to have become 
a great multitude living beyond the Sambadion 
river, where they still maintained their ancient 
worship, and daily sacrifices were kindled by fire 
from heaven. But if this were true, it could 
never be verified to the satisfaction of plain in- 


130 


AGATHA. 


quisitive travellers, like her father, Aaron Levi, 
who had spent many years in trying to discover 
that miraculous and Sabbath-keeping river of 
volcanic fire. She could not, for her own part, 
do otherwise than follow out the pious studies 
of her father, who believed that the lost children 
of Abraham were to be found among the dark- 
hued denizens of America. 

Night after night at the camp-fire, the people 
were instructed by this simple, unsophisticated 
girl, who was so admirable, exemplary, and duti- 
ful a daughter to the squaw-sachem ; so that 
she gradually won a great following among those 
Indians who were disposed to religious inquiry. 
They began now to notice that many of their 
rites and customs were not unlike those of the 
people of God whom the fair young missionary 
depicted. Some, at least, were persuaded that 
Rachel was of their tribe, or they of hers ; and 
the tie seemed stronger since it was mysterious 
and ancient. Even the powwows acknowledged 
this. 

With the powwows Rachel took great pains 
to make friends. If any of them were reli- 
giously inclined by nature, as all were by profes- 
sion she attracted them to herself, by judicious 


QUINEMIQUET. 


131 


conversations upon those great mysteries which 
perplex all mankind. If any were proud of the 
singular powers with which they were gifted, 
she betook herself to them as one who would 
reverently learn all that they would teach ; then 
she gradually taught them of her own arts, 
until they acknowledged her leadership. 

It was believed in those days that this power- 
ful body of men could perform a variety of mira- 
cles, — making water burn, rocks move, trees 
dance, or even metamorphose themselves into 
men of fire ; they could produce green leaves in 
winter out of old-leaf ashes. Sometimes, it was 
believed, even by the whites, the powers of dark- 
ness listened to the powwow invocations, — their 
roaring, their groaning, when the devotees foamed 
at the mouth, or for half a day smote themselves 
upon breast and thighs, tormenting themselves 
in this diabolical service ; and the devil, “ to re- 
quite tliem of their worship and nuzzle them up 
in their devilish religion, recovered for them 
their sick.” 

The daughter of Levi had learned from her 
mother so many sleight-of-hand tricks, and oc- 
cult arts, that she might easily have become 
the principal powwow, famed in many Indian 


132 


AGATHA. 


nations. But she was careful to excite no feel- 
ing of rivalry, or make herself unduly prominent. 
Her devices could better be served by a modest 
demeanor among her own adopted people. She 
did, however, practise in private certain arts 
which she made known only upon most urgent 
request, and in which she appeared loath to give 
even the slightest instruction. The very mystery 
in which she chose to shroud her magical craft 
added greatly to her influence over the Indian 
powwows. 

They were in fact afraid of her ; although she 
was always gentle, and sought to win rather 
than force others to follow her wishes. Thus 
the singular fascination exercised by the daugh- 
ter of the squaw-sachem left some in doubt 
whether Quinemiquet was not after all in her 
humble state the real ruler. 

It would not accord with the grim story, as it 
has come down to us, to represent that Rachel 
in her Indian guise had it at all in mind to ac- 
quire tribal influence for any other reason than 
that she might so protect herself from inter- 
meddling whites, while she was persecuting Ber- 
nard Anselm, and carrying out to the full that 
vile vow which had been extorted from the 


QUJNEMIQUET. 


133 


poor girl by her dying father, — who was, it 
is most likely, demented by the ruin of his 
only daughter. 

The solitude of her dreadful life in the forest 
could be surpassed only by that loneliness which 
separated her from all the world when she vis- 
ited the Pilgrim settlements. Could she have 
been a firm believer in the arts which her 
mother professed, — as Kachel was not, — then 
she might have had resource in that mysterious 
world which appeared to wait her bidding. If 
she practised that which she learned when a 
mere child, it was as an amusement, — sad in 
itself, and fitted to her temper. As to her reg- 
ular employment, it was more demoniacal than 
magic. It is probable that Rachel would have 
proved very religious in mature years, as her 
father was by nature and habit, had she not 
been betrayed by her instructor in divine truth. 
As it was, in the grisly New England forests 
she often spent her mornings alone, as if she 
would be devout. It was in these solitudes, 
which should have been dedicated to penitence 
and prayer, that her mind was often diverted 
from things sacred to that which was merely 
mysterious ; and she thought more of her moth- 


134 


AGATHA. 


er’s magic than of a possible miracle of mercy 
in her own moral reformation. By her training 
she w^as not so strict a Jew but that she could 
play at fast and loose with her religion. During 
many benighted generations the Holy Scriptures, 
as living water, had been more lightly esteemed 
by her mother’s ancestors than the Mishna, 
which was like wine, or the Gemara, which was 
wine refined. 

No day passed but that the sinning devotee, in 
morning hours in the forest, called upon God : 
“ Pity me, an undeserving sinner, 0 Thou who 
didst originally form me in Thine image.” But 
how could the poor blinded woman seek unto 
God aright in the dense darkness of her pitiable 
life ? Down through the black ages of Hebrew 
superstition and oppression she looked in vain 
for any such spiritual illumination as once ap- 
peared to the son of Jesse, from whom she drew 
her life-blood. Instead of weeping over their 
sins, and crying unto God in the phrases of 
Israel’s poet-king, the rabbis and physicians of 
Spain, from whom Bachel’s mother was de- 
scended, had, with rare exceptions since Rabbi 
Moses ben Nachmanides, — whose wisdom won 
for his master, Alfonso X. of Castile, his title. 


QUINEMIQUET, 


135 


“ The Wise,” — studied the mystic Cabala and 
the antique art of Chaldea. 

The properties which are peculiar to the stars 
were taught Kachel, at that age when the Pil- 
grim children were catechised upon the attributes 
of God. The occult science of ancient sages of 
the Orient was still munificently rewarded in 
the courts of Europe ; ^ so that the thrifty Leah 
imparted to her daughter the secrets of an art 
which might serve her in good stead. Pachel 
indeed learned much more. Had not her mother 
acquired the skill of Cecilia of Lisbon ? As a 
child, Rachel’s vocal organs were so adapted to 
produce ventriloquistic effects that she might 
have surpassed even Barbara Jacobi of Haarlem. 
More or less tricks of jugglery were also known 
to the Jewish astrologers of bygone ages. But 
highest of all was esteemed the art of talismanic 
magic, based upon a national trait of supersti- 
tion, which led the Hebrews in exile to have 
much to do with spirits, omens, dreams, and 
charms. 

Quinemiquet had, therefore, at easy com- 
mand resources which had never entered the 

1 Queen Elizabeth did not despise astrological infor- 
mation. 


136 


AGATHA. 


minds of the pagan powwows around her. She 
excelled them all in proper medical knowledge, 
which availed oftenest for sick women and chil- 
dren. But if it were needful to apply a strong 
remedy to frighten a tough warrior out of a fit 
of mere hypo, she could do it by appearing to 
him out of the darkness, emitting light from 
her clothing. 

In some retired place of silent and tranquil 
solitude, at the rising of the sun, when her 
mind was least distracted, when she might be 
most firm and steadfast if apparitions were ob- 
served, in the hour ostensibly given to morning 
devotion, she studied the secrets which had 
come down from the learned men of her nation. 
So she led a strange life, dwelling in the pres- 
ence of those angels who in holy watches pre- 
side over each hour of day and night, and com- 
municating with sidereal spirits, calling them 
out of their gloomy solitudes by invocation, 
then with clarified vision beholding them com- 
ing on the wings of zephyrs or running upon 
the rays of the morning, — effulgent cohorts, 
made favorable to earthly behest by conjuration. 
She stood robed in white, facing the East, and 
threw into an earthen chafing-dish pinches of 


QUINEMIQUET. 


137 


perfume, grateful to aerial spirits destined to 
serve, or to keep at a distance hurtful powers of 
the air. With impressive ceremonial she drew 
upon the ground characters of magic spell ; and 
she summoned planetary powers, or exorcised evil 
spirits with solemn incantations. It was “ white 
art ” — to please the fancy of Indian lovers, or 
her own wayward moods — which she practised; 
although she could exercise ‘‘ black art,” call- 
ing out those dark powers by which property 
would be destroyed, contracts broken, friend- 
ships uprooted, and marriage-vows violated by 
planetary influence. 

The blackest of all black arts, however, she 
did practise, unknown to her Indian friends, in 
her occasional incursions upon the white settle- 
ments. There was probably more or less of 
mania in the mind of Rachel, as to those pha- 
ses of life by which she had personally suf- 
fered most; else, she was powerfully moved by 
the insane vow which was sealed by the dying 
lips of her father, the maddened Levi., Else, 
it suited her diabolical humor to tempt men, 
then turn upon them in her wrath. Bound as 
she was by her oath to lead a life of personal 
purity, her unnatural, insane oath also bound 


138 


AGATHA. 


her, perhaps as a punishment for her own wrong- 
doing, to be of immodest behavior, — in order 
to snare the worst of men, then turn them over 
to their sweethearts and wives as creatures too 
foul to be in decent company. So she disturbed 
the peace of churches, raised mobs in towns, 
and brought down the wrath of respectable peo- 
ple upon the sons of shame. If she was ‘‘ pos- 
sessed,” it must have been by a jocular demon, 
of quaint humor, who shook his sides in laugh- 
ter at the consternation she created in good 
families, and at the turning of towns inside 
out, — so bringing the rogues to the surface. 
To stimulate depravity, kindling unholy fires 
and then making sport in their light, was in- 
deed a diabolical calling. 

The wretched creature was careful to conceal 
from the Indians, upon whose faithfulness her 
personal safety depended, the blackness of her 
life when she moved about alone among the 
scattered colonists. Or she availed herself of 
her reputation as a conjurer or powwow, stating 
if need be that she was an avenging angel to 
visit sins against the home, — that penitence 
and holy life would follow her just chastisement 
of wrong doing. For herself, she had no repu- 


QUINEMIQUET. 


139 


tation to keep or to lose, and was reckless of 
appearances. The instincts proper to woman- 
hood she had trodden upon in company with 
Bernard Anselm years before. If he could still 
be looked upon as respectable, she was not very 
bad, — if she was bad, he was no better ; so 
thought the unhappy woman. 

A mind which would reason that it was re- 
ligious in her to make or to keep, upon oath to 
God, a vow which must have been suggested to 
Levi by Smael, must have labored under other 
hallucinations equally dangerous to moral well- 
being. She justified herself to herself on half- 
truths, leaving out ideas which should have 
entered into her judgment. 

Hopelessly vain, fond of attention from men, 
— as vain young men are fond of attention 
from women, — she was willing to be flattered 
even by those she could not respect. She was 
lonely, and wanted a home ; if friendly toward 
men, the best scorned her, and the worst insulted 
her. She was little disposed to blame herself. 

Upon the other hand, the Jewess deemed her- 
self positively religious, after a sort; personal 
hopelessness not relieving her from a sense of 
obligation. To her, Israel was still chosen of 


140 


AGATHA. 


God, even in dispersion ; she held her vow 
sacred, — this was so far fulfilling an obligation ; 
she had a care to observe such religious rites as 
accorded with her mode of life. She did not 
appear to be conscious of wrong-doing, or of 
being in an imperfect moral light ; and did not 
suspect herself of having essentially perverted 
her sense of right. 

Of much dignity of bearing, and with the 
strong pride of her race, she was mindful of her 
person, and, as well, of maintaining such con- 
sistency of moral character as accorded with her 
views. It would probably have surprised her 
more than any one else if the thesis had been 
set up in her hearing that Rachel was very likely 
possessed of a devil ; although it would have been 
most easily proved, — allowing the evil spirit 
of her dying father to have entered into her. 
Whether or not she was of disarranged mental 
constitution, her views of right were strangely 
disordered, the barbarity of the savages being 
benevolence when compared with what she did 
with so much coolness and orderly preparation. 

It may be quite true that Rachel was a mono- 
maniac in respect to her deep-seated purpose of 
revenge. Who better than the Jews, with ages 


QUINEMIQUET. 


141 


of wrong behind them, could furnish extreme 
examples of this madness ? Was not Aaron 
Levi excusable, if any man could be ? In him it 
was probably a true mental aberration. And if 
the daughter, with a deep sense of her own wrongs, 
under the excitement of her father’s death, took 
the impious vow, it were not strange if it came 
to be her religion to act wickedly in harmony 
with a vow rooted in insanity. Perhaps in doing 
it, the pitiable creature, abandoned by Anselm, 
was not in a normal mental condition ; even al- 
though she was not conscious of intellectual 
flightiness. To her, it seemed to be right ; 
although predestined spiritual loss might fol- 
low it. 

Could Anselm have returned to her, Rachel’s 
mental balance might have been restored by 
earthly influences ; if not, then all pitiful angels 
might well pray — if there was mercy still for 
such as Rachel. The angels indeed might pray, 
for it seemed little likely that any one upon the 
earth would care for her. How could Bernard 
even make it a point to ask God to pity one to 
whom he himself had shown no pity ? Who 
else was there unless Agatha, brought near 
enough to the wretch to care for her good? 


142 


AGATHA. 


The unselfish angels around the throne might 
well pray ; but could it be looked for that Agatha 
should serve the carnal or spiritual welfare of 
her husband’s discarded mistress? The earth 
would be verily crowded with angels, if every 
wife were to rectify the wrongs wrought by her 
husband. 


XV. 


QUADEQUINA. 

/GOVERNOR BRADFORD, whose service was 
continued during almost the lifetime of 
an average generation, claimed certain vacation 
years ; of which Winslow served three, and 
Prence two. This year Prence was to relieve 
Bradford. They met at Pokeeste to confer with 
the Indians, in accordance with the gubernato- 
rial promise ; Agatha going thither, also, in com- 
pany with Mrs. Prence. The Governor had 
already attempted, through the aged Massasoit, 
to procure the surrender of Rachel to the Colo- 
nial authorities ; representing that she was such 
a woman as ought not to be shielded. The 
Grand Saciiem agreed to give answer by his 
brother Quadequina, who was to preside at the 
great gathering of Indian braves ; when the 
foster-daughter of Wamsutta was to meet the Gov- 
ernor, and rehearse before him her wrongs, and 
formally demand that the Colony exile Anselm, 


144 


AGATHA. 


— in order that Plymouth, so long friendly, 
should not harbor one who must be counted as an 
enemy. 

The Cape Cod region, the whole country be- 
tween Narragansett and Massachusetts Bays, and 
the district lying between the Pawtucket and 
Charles Rivers, were subject to the Grand Sa- 
chem of Pokanoket, as Mount Hope was desig- 
nated ; so that the semi-official protection given 
by Massasoit to the protegS of one of the subor- 
dinate rulers, Weetamoo, made it needful for the 
relatively feeble band of Pilgrims to act with 
caution, that no occasion of quarrel might be 
found. 

The villages of the Nausets had been visited 
by crafty Quinemiquet ^ so that they were well 
represented, and were hot to avenge her wrongs 
against Anselm, who had lately come to contam- 
inate by his presence the air of the Cape. The 
young men of Meshawn, Penonakanit, Monamo- 
yic, Sawtucket,*’Quivet, Scargo, Weequakut, and 
Conrassakumkanit, were at hand. Mattaquason 
of Pochet and Junno of Mattachiest were there ; 
and the sachems Aspannow of Nauset, Wah- 
woonetshunke and Sabatubket of Nobsquassit 
and Sursuit, and Cawnacome of Manomet, and 


QUADEQUINA, 


145 


certain sachems of the Massapees, and warriors 
from perhaps a score more of villages. It was a 
popular cause. If a prominent white sinner could 
be taken to task, it would go to offset some of the 
Puritan preaching upon the sins of the savages. 

To those who gathered, Quinemiquet rehearsed 
briefly what she, in the person of her ancestors 
and in her own person, had suffered from the 
palefaced barbarians, — fitting her phrases to 
the sons of the forest by similes and circumlocu- 
tions not now needful to rehearse. 

The substance of what she said was that, for 
five centuries preceding their exile to Spain her 
ancestors had lived in England, where they were 
treasurers to the great sachem of that country ; 
that is to say, he protected them in extorting 
money from his subjects, and royalty alone had 
the right to plunder them in return. It was 
forbidden these vassals of the Crown to go out 
of the kingdom, or to become Christians. The 
Jews being gold, were not proper subjects of 
baptism, nor could they be permitted to slip out 
of the royal clutches. The failure of the Jews 
to appreciate the beauties of this system, al- 
though administered by fulers so remarkable 
for personal piety that they were spoken of in 
10 


146 


AGATHA, 


the superlative degree as ‘‘ the Most ^ Chris^ 
tian Kings, indicated perverseness which was 
punishable. This lack of kindness in Jewish 
disposition was therefore avenged by the king’s 
permission to subjects exasperated by extortion 
to perpetrate outrages upon the Jewish usurers ; 
and finally he himself banished them by edict, 
the king being paid for it by grants out of the 
Jewish property from the clergy and parliament 
who did not own it. The crisis was hastened 
by the fact that a Jewess of that branch of the 
line of David from which Rachel descended, 
had been secretly married to a circumcised 
priest, which led the London mob to demand 
the burning of every Jew in the city ; but the 
king considerately consented to burn only a score 
or two of those immediately concerned in the 
affair. When the sixteen thousand Jews were 
banished, the merchants of England fitted out 
vessels with private crews to transport them, 
throwing the passengers overboard, of leaving 
them on sandbars off the coast at low tide, or 
landing them on desolate islands alive with wild 
beasts. And ship-masters not fortunate enough 

1 Lexicographers believe that, in this eminently respect- 
able instance, “ most ” was a Europeanism for “ almost.’* 


QUADEQUINA. 


147 


to obtain a share in the transportation acted 
as pirates to plunder any not otherwise stripped. 
Rachel was careful to explain that these Chris- 
tian gentlemen were the ancestors of the Pilgrim 
Colonists. 

The few exiles who escaped the Northern rob- 
bers and reached Spain, lived upon the peninsula 
in peace. But afterwards there came a time 
when a vineyard was sold for a suit of clothes, 
and a house for an ass, with which to flee the 
country, — a general edict being issued to the 
followers of Jesus Christ to steal all Jewish 
children under fourteen, in order that they 
might be baptized and brought up in a Christian 
way. Yet, journeying from land to land, they 
went with brave hearts, making the country 
resound with songs to Jehovah. 

In reciting the horrible details of these trans- 
actions by the savages of England and Spain, 
Rachel at one point put on the Sambenito, a 
yellow serge cloak completely covered with fig- 
ures of red crosses, serpents, demons and flames, 
which she affirmed had been worn by one of 
her own ancestors, who at one time tampered 
with Christianity, and then wore the robe at 
the mandate of the Church in penance for Juda- 


148 


AGATHA. 


izing. Fiercely gesticulating in her robe, and 
placing upon her head a pointed cap ornamented 
like the garment, she depicted to the peaceful 
Indians of the Cape the horrors of the Quema- 
deros where the baptized pagans used to burn 
the Jews. 

Having wrought her hearers up to a high 
pitch of excitement, she related the removal of 
her father’s house to Holland, where an obscure 
sect of the so-called Christians had risen in 
rebellion against their Spanish enemies. Then 
she told in simple phrase the story of Bernard 
Anselm. 

“ She has come to us,” added Quadequina, 
after Rachel had ceased, “ seeking shelter from 
her enemies, and the enemies of her people ; 
and she shall have it. We do not seek a quar- 
rel with the tribe of palefaces ; but we are in 
no temper to suffer wrong at their hands. My 
nephew has adopted Quinemiquet as his own 
daughter, and the daughter of Weetamoo. If 
the palefaces keep her destroyer within their 
protection, we cannot be answerable to them 
for any acts of violence which our young men, 
with hearts of fire, may commit against him.” ^ 
1 The translation by Mrs. Prence. 


QUADEQUINA. 


149 


The murmur of the Indians warned Governor 
Bradford that the hour was not favorable to urge 
his demand for the person of the Jewess. And 
to Agatha it was apparent that the Plymouth 
Colony jurisdiction was likely to be disturbed 
for Bernard’s sake, — there being foretokens of 
a storm on his account, should he continue to 
reside in Nauset. 

This conference had one effect upon the mind 
of Agatha. She was now clear that Rachel was 
not in league with the devil or possessed, but, 
in the old fashioned Puritan phrase, — totally de- 
praved. This conviction arose from what was 
learned concerning her life. Reflecting upon 
the creature’s artfulness, Agatha concluded that, 
in conversing with Bernard and herself, Rachel 
had sought only to alienate them from each 
other ; that with a background of woe behind 
her, she was committed to avenge a thousand 
years of wrong upon her race ; that the sins of 
centuries were concentrated in her ; that, by arts 
forbidden, and by mental habit, the Jewess was 
a pagan, with all her depravity ingrained, — for 
whom there could be little hope that she would 
voluntarily turn to a better mind ; that little 
else could be looked for than that she would 


150 


AGATHA, 


give her entire life to vengeance; and that it 
should be looked for that she would live like a 
woman of unclean mind. Agatha’s womanly 
sense put no fine point upon Eachel’s pretence 
to personal purity in leading an apparently 
abandoned life, — acts of sin not being needful 
to establish the guilt of one whose mind was im- 
pure. Eevenge, Agatha could pardon ; but pity 
itself could hardly reach out toward a woman 
who was not a woman, — whose instincts were 
brutal. 


XVI. 


CAPE COD EEEEMEX. 

*^1 'HE effect of the Indian gathering upon the 
Eastham colonists was immediate. It were 
easier to deride the Cape Cod freemen than to 
show that they were not fundamentally right 
in banding together to protect the home life, if 
they imagined it to be endangered. Even if as a 
whole they acted unjustly toward one of their 
own number, and that upon partial information, 
and if they had mistaken views of what was the 
wisest thing to be done, their intention was 
right ; and for this a debt is due them from 
after-ages. Their position was such that they 
had to stand shoulder to shoulder, and act 
promptly in the wilderness. At a distance from 
prelacy and royalty, they followed the leadings 
of their own democratic church-government, 
and out of the traditions of vestry-meetings and 
manorial courts, and the immemorial usages of 
the sturdy Saxons upon the German ocean. 


152 


AGATHA. 


developed complete self-government; so that 
their popular gatherings ultimately gave political 
life, new to the world, to an opening continent. 

But a town-meeting is unique. Any sharp 
talker can capture it, if he happens to humor 
the whim of the majority. When, therefore, 
Deacon Doane wished to delay until nightfall 
the vote of the neighbors requesting Mr. Anselm 
to remove, he planned for an interminable talk 
upon the ten lost tribes of Israel, and kept the 
town-meeting all day in a sharp discussion upon 
the origin of the American Indians ; so that, 
long before the offensive vote could reach them, 
Agatha and her husban-d were far away in the 
wilderness, migrating to some new region to 
begin life over again. 

No one can turn the records of public gather- 
ings in Colonial days, without being confronted 
by the fact that there was a great popular inter- 
est in topics that would be exceedingly tedious 
in these days. The elementary principles of 
public policy and personal freedom ; distinctions 
in theological definition; the moral bearing of 
social usages, — were all debated on Sunday and 
week day by clergy and laity. A debate upon 
the ten tribes of Israel, as possibly related to the 


CAPE COD FREEMEN. 


153 


barbarians of the primeval forest around them, 
made the primitive white settlers of Nauset 
happy ; much as later denizens of that town took 
pleasure in jolly days at a camp-meeting, and 
some of them in quadrilles and a breakdown. 

It was near the Town Cove where the first 
meeting-house and town-house of Eastham stood, 
— a little building twenty feet square, loop-holed 
for muskets, and covered with a steep, thatched 
roof. Near by was the burial-place of the early 
settlers, which is still enclosed. The best and 
the worst were present in the democratic meet- 
ing, — about so many of the linsey-woolsey, 
of coarse, animal aspect, proud, self-contained, 
asking no odds of the world, drawling, turbu- 
lent ; and another set, with their silver tooth- 
picks: the slouching servants from the farms, 
and contented, honest, self-respecting, thought- 
ful, fine-looking men, their masters. 

Some were disposed to be fair, — “Doth our 
law judge any man before it hear him ? ” 
Others did not want to hear ; they said that 
they had heard enough, — or “ heard about ” the 
accused, which was about the same with them. 

The only incident that made the meeting tol- 
erably interesting, as different from others of 


154 


AGATHA. 


like sort, was the incoming of Rachel. To some 
this gave a backset to the proceedings. 

‘‘ Is she a Jew, who crucified the Lord ? ” 
asked Mr. Joseph Rogers. ‘‘I’ll bear no part 
to right any wrongs under which she groans.” 

She wore the yellow taftety, in the form of 
two tables, upon her breast, as required by old 
laws, — so that it could be easily seen that she 
was one of the hated nation. 

“You might see by her makeup,” remarked 
Ralph Wadibone, “ that she ’s a true darter of 
Jizebel.” 

“ Jezebel wa’n’t a Jewess,” exclaimed Mr. 
Bacon. “You are not up in Scripter.” 

“ Mr. Moderator, I should ’a’ compared her to 
Mary Magdalene and the other ladies of the New 
Testament. They were a stiff-necked people, 
who vexed the soul of Moses.” 

“ Mr. Moderator, I don’t go in for botherin’ 
the Jews as sech in this open country,” said 
Mr. William Sears, an old man, rising from his 
bench with difficulty. “ There ’s no difference 
betwixt Jews and Gentiles here. We cannot, 
in this Colony, taunt ’er or hate ’er on account 
of ’er race.” 

They all stared at her. 


CAPE COD FREEMEN, 


155 


‘^This is onexpected,” Thomas Flawne ven- 
tured to remark, after a moment of silence. 
“ She does look mighty spruce ; and her face 
is like a pictur.” 

“ For all that,’’ explained Mr. John Smaleley, 
“the young creetur is morally destitute, in all 
her fine attire.” 

“ Mr. Moderator,” interposed Wadibone, “ she 
is a kind of sarceress. Her tech would wither 
your wrist like fire.” 

“ I move,” said Mr. Rogers, “ that she be 
whipt at a cart’s tail, through the town’s street; 
and wear a badge upon her left sleeve during 
her abode within this government ; and if she 
be found abroad without it, that she be burned 
in the face with a hot iron.” 

“ I don’t understand, Mr. Moderator,” said the 
aged Sears, “ that she is a Quaker or a Baptist ; 
and I think we can tolerate her, if we make an 
example of him wot did her wrong.” 

With steel-like visage, Rachel stood unmoved 
amid this commotion. Constable Knight, who 
was near her, began to lobster with his arms, 
to see whether she would stir or no. 

“I pray you, hear me,” said the Jewess, in tones 
which conciliated every ear. 


156 


AGATHA. 


She was no wanton liar. Rachel merely kept 
to the truth ; but that sad truth she did tell, 
most effectively, — as she had told it in season 
and out of season so frequently, whenever she 
could find any one willing to listen. Self-devoted 
to vengeance, she told her story, not without a 
singular shrinking in one apparently so bold, 
yet too bluntly for the usages of speech in later 
times. 

“ Now,” she said, ‘‘ all I ask for Bernard 
Anselm is, that men shall curse him in the 
same breath in which they curse poor Rachel. 
And as for me, all I ask is, that you think on 
the words of your own Master, who declared 
that sin was in the mere thought of lust ; and 
that no man cast a stone at me unless he himself 
is free from sin.” 

First standing a moment in silence, the woman 
walked out and disappeared in the forest. The 
town meeting voted that it was fitting for Ber- 
nard Anselm, also, to disappear from their 
precincts. 


XVII. 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT. 
GATH A awoke next morning with some 



such sense of thankfulness as she might 
have felt had she succeeded in getting an in- 
valid companion out of a house on fire. Not 
that Bernard was an invalid ; his physical con- 
dition was perfect. He had taken little interest 
in the farm save as a means of health for the 
season. Never was he the man to gossip with 
others about his own affairs ; nor did he trouble 
himself as to what the neighbors said, — so that 
he knew relatively little of the hubbub on the 
Cape. Agatha’s undisturbed serenity had not led 
him to think that anything of unusual import- 
ance was going forward. Her suggestion as to 
moving accorded with his own mind. He had 
never liked the Cape very well for a home. He 
was inclined to solitude, if a new plantation was 
the best thing to plan for; but if re-entering 
mercantile life was the best, the location must 
be decided from a business point of view. 


158 


AGATHA. 


Agatha had been not without disappointment 
in her heart, as to her home life ; it was not 
fulfilling the dreams of her girlhood and the 
early months of marriage. Moreover, there was 
a sense of womanly shame. She felt not a little 
disgraced. Of good family, reputed well in the 
church of the living God, the church whose good 
opinion made life better worth living, she some- 
times felt her cheeks burn when she reflected 
what it was all for that her husband should be 
driven from town to town. 

The gray of the morning, however, at Barn- 
stable, found Agatha of cheery spirit, as if the 
summer birds had not yet gone south, and hope 
was still building and singing in her heart. 
They debated a little whither they should fare ; 
deciding finally to seek out their old pastor’s 
son, the friend of Leyden days, Isaac Kobinson, 
who then kept the ordinary at Sachonesit. 

This Pilgrim Greatheart might have done 
something to make good the failure of his father 
to come to America, had he not sought to live 
out the liberality of his father, and look for new 
light from God’s Word. He had been deprived 
of his rights as a freeman, for suspected sympa- 
thy with the Quakers. Having been appointed 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT, 159 

to attend their meetings in order to confute 
them, he found no reason why any fair-minded 
man should set upon them violently, — and he 
was therefore himself ousted by the Plymouth 
brethren. 

But he had breadth of mind enough not to 
feel greatly disturbed at any unfairness on their 
part; and took no grudge with him into that 
wilderness which he was subduing. Indeed, he 
did not mention to Mr. Anselm that anything 
had happened to him ; nor did it occur to him 
to condole with Bernard and Agatha upon their 
exile. Rather, he opened the door of his house 
full-width to them in hospitality ; and by his 
warm, healthy nature imparted to them of his 
own gifts and graces received out of heaven. 
No stranger, even, could talk with Robinson for 
an hour without discerning that there was 
nothing petty about him. In his house, so full 
of sunshine, Bernard and Agatha were guests 
during all the days of that gloomy November. 

The presence of Isaac Robinson’s aged mother, 
the relict of Agatha’s Leyden pastor, could not 
but recall to the mind of Bernard Anselm’s wife 
the more keenly a sense of her own disgrace. 
It was not as if she had been a fallen woman in 


160 


AGATHA. 


that host of saintly Puritan matrons, but it was 
as if her husband had fallen. Although it had 
occurred in early life, before she knew him, it 
now surrounded her with a domestic and social 
atmosphere to which her mind had been little 
accustomed. She could not but observe in the 
conduct and bearing of the widowed mother 
toward her and Bernard a certain tenderness, 
such as thoughtful friends observe in houses 
touched by some great sorrow; and Agatha 
overheard her praying for the pilgrim guests in 
the house, that God would be mindful of the hour 
in which Satan desired to sift them as wheat. 

Robinson had the happy art to lift the minds 
of his guests far above themselves, by convers- 
ing upon themes remote from the chagrins that 
bore upon them hardest, which yet threw light 
upon them as if from above. He was, like his 
father, quick-witted and sharp, plain-spoken, so- 
cial, courteous, thorough-going, and very anxious 
to gain good store of the wisdom which is from 
above. 

“ In regard th* it doth appeare,” says the old 
record, “ th‘ there is greate recourse to and fro by 
travellers to Martha’s Vineyard, Isaac Robinson 
is approv^ and alowed by Court to keepe an ordi- 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT. 161 


nary att Sachonesit, comodius for their jurniing ; 
to draw and sell wine by retaile, and to lod® and 
entertaine straingers and travellers to bead and 
bord, for dew concideration for y® same.” 

In this humble hostelry of rough-hewn logs, 
where the tables were laid with wooden spoons 
and square wooden plates, and lighted by iron 
candlesticks, the table talk of the landlord, of 
Agatha the daughter of Brewster, and of Ber- 
nard Anselm, was worthy of the most eminent 
Christian philosophers of the world. Not with- 
out merry laughter before the cheery fire of 
crackling logs, there were many words spoken 
indicative of the spirit of the founders of the 
Old Colony, which have been ringing in the 
ears of the honored generations of the Robinson 
house to this day. 

‘‘ Our host ” — it was written in Agatha’s 
quaint journal — “ said that the soul of the 
just man is like an egg, or like virtue in a 
woman, spoiled if suspected ; that a man’s honor 
is tainted if a suspicion of injustice rests upon 
him, or if it be mooted whether he is just or 
not. 

“ ‘ My father,’ he said, ^ was very confident 
that the Lord had more truth and light yet to 
11 


162 


AGATHA. 


break forth out of His holy word ; and it was 
written in the original covenant of the Pilgrim 
church, that the Lord’s free people joined them- 
selves to walk in all His ways, made known or 
to he made known to them. But since your 
father, Agatha, is dead, the church at Plymouth 
has taken the ground that no more truth and 
light may break forth unless the Court allows 
it. They do not want a celestial luminary to 
rise, except according to calculation ; they would 
have it come like the moon, with regularity, 
whether full or quartering. 

“ ‘ They may whip the Quakers, and then throw 
them into prison for not paying his fee to the 
man who plies the lash, but James Skiff can 
smuggle in from the sea so many Quakers as 
to make them respected ; and an historic paint- 
ing of Horred Gardner, kneeling, with a child 
at her breast, to pray for those who brutally 
whipped her with knotted cords, will live as 
long as any painting of the landing of the 
Pilgrims.’ ” 

The large-hearted Anselm, who had been once 
left out of the government on account of his 
opposition to the measures pursued against the 
Quakers, was cheered by the incoming of the 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT. 163 


reverend and venerable John Lothrop, — whose 
guest he had been in Barnstable upon the night 
he left Nauset, — and of Thomas Mayhew, that 
nobleman set apart by nature. Lothrop had 
been reading at the pitch-pine blaze — this was 
upon the evening of the fifteenth — out of clas- 
sic story : “ They deride you,’’ it was said to 
that philosopher to whom the world has given 
higher rank and dearer remembrance than to 
many a king. ‘‘ But I am not derided,” was the 
quiet answer. 

“ That reminds me,” said young Bernard, of 
the words of Huldreich Zwingli, who was not 
grieved at the incredible number of lies told 
about him, since his mind was occupied in con- 
templating his Master, who was not only worse 
lied about, but crucified without causes” 

“ It is game that does not pay the powder, to 
hunt down small liars,” said Mayhew, not with- 
out emphasis. “We have no more present right 
to expect to free the world from all villains than 
from all vermin, from backbiters than from rat- 
tlesnakes. Our lives are for something else 
than the hot and ignoble pursuit of the petty 
enemies and pests of civilization.” 

“ By your own experience in prison, when 


164 


AGATHA. 


your wife was dying,’’ said Agatha tenderly, ad- 
dressing herself to Mr. Lothrop, “ you became 
near kin of my father and of many others. 
That rock where you first worshipped in Barn- 
stable is at least a place of freedom ; which is 
more than can be said of the Cathedrals of our 
dear old English home.” 

“ It is a matter of congratulation,” quoth 
May hew, “ that your father, and William Brad- 
ford, and our ministerial friend here, did not 
become bitter through enduring sorrow. The 
wine of life is apt to turn to vinegar, when free- 
dom is treated as felony and is shut up in irons.” 

I am quite ready,” remarked the host, re- 
plenishing the fire with a fresh knot, “ to forgive 
the austerity of those who have been scorched, 
if not burned, by the fires of prelatical persecu- 
tion. The spirit of English freedom has been 
severely tested by Stuart kings, by shackles, by 
dungeons ; and we must expect that the Amer- 
ican refugees will be very jealous of their liber- 
ty, and that they will be harsh toward those 
who threaten to infringe upon it.” 

“It has required upon the part of these per- 
secuted Pilgrims no small force of will to live 
through all that they have been called to en- 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT, 165 

dure,” Bernard said ; “ and if they have lived 
through it by sheer force of character and the 
favor of God, I for one expect that their strong 
personality will manifest itself sometimes in 
methods not reasonable.” 

“ Does it not seem odd,” asked Agatha, that 
our Chief Justice in England should remark 
that ‘ the separatists have narrow souls, else 
they would not break the peace of the Church 
about inconsiderable points of difference ? ’ His 
honor does not tell us what he thinks of the 
narrowness of that Church which turned two 
thousand ministers out of their livings, and 
even mutilated the flesh of some, like poor law- 
yer Prynne, for instance, for differing from them 
upon one of those same ‘ inconsiderable points 
of difference.’ ” 

“ Yet,” the keeper of the ordinary said, “ pro- 
lix Prynne himself is one of the most violent 
men in England against tolerating the Jews.” 

“ I suspect that the trouble is fundamental 
with human nature as it now exists,” remarked 
Lothrop. “ It is little more than three hun- 
dred years since the average Englishman was 
simply a barbarian seeking freedom.” 

“ And our ancestral savages of the age of 


166 


AGATHA. 


Edward I.,” added Agatha, “ were not by many 
centuries separated from the primitive pagans 
and pirates from whom they sprang.’’ 

“ I think that your English people are getting 
on very well,” said the Dutchman, Agatha’s hus- 
band, blowing out a whiff of tobacco-smoke, 
which, in the language of the times, he was 
“ drinking,” by special license of the landlord. 
‘‘ I suppose that in two hundred years from 
now the historians will look back, and scoff at 
the whole Puritan people of this generation as 
tainted with barbaric habits of thought and 
usages, which pertain not peculiarly to us, but 
to the age in which we live.” 

“ For all that,” said Robinson, “ we must fight 
the battle that falls to us. When kings would 
take us by the throat, or bishops would strangle 
us with tippets, and the worst men alive would 
infect us with ungodly habits, and when the 
very Indians at our doors may rise and take our 
scalps, it is no time to hesitate and balance 
scruples. I am sure I don’t blame the Colony 
for revising their freemen’s lists, and insisting 
upon frequent renewal of the oaths of fidelity.” 

“ And on my part,” said Bernard, “ I don’t 
blame them for poking suspected people off into 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT. 167 


new wildernesses. They are in no mood to be 
polite to sinners. If they were men of less 
nerve, they would be unfit to found a nation.” 

“ When the religious hopes of mankind,” re- 
turned Agatha, “ are borne for safety from one 
continent to another, it can but be looked for 
that a few bundles of antique prejudices should 
be borne with them.” 

‘‘ I believe,” said Mayhew, not thinking how 
worthy he himself was of immortality in Amer- 
ican history, that Bradford, who is so shrinking 
and modest, and Winslow, and Prence, of ma- 
jestic countenance and a well-wilier to all who 
fear God and a terror to evil-doers, and Win- 
throp, and Endicott, are none of them conscious 
of doing anything memorable; and it is not 
easy to believe that they find themselves listen- 
ing for the song of coming ages. But these 
men whose hearts are hard toward the frivoli- 
ties of this generation ; who ask of their king 
the poor boon of exile to make their homes in 
the inexorable wilderness, for liberty of con- 
science and what they believe to be Scriptural 
worship, in order that their little ones may live 
unto God; who contend with hardships; who 
spend their time, their labors, their estates for 


168 


AGATHA. 


those who shall come after them, that there may 
he a God-fearing nation, — these are the men of 
whom the world is not worthy. And if, by 
harsh ruling, they persuade some of us to seek 
out new forests or the islands of the sea, rather 
than be their neighbors, we will fight out our 
battles with the world and the flesh and the 
devil in the sight of our God, and by the help 
of ministering angels, without the companion- 
ship of our persecutors, whom we still love and 
honor, whatever faults they have brought with 
them from our old home beyond the sea.” 

“Amen ! ” responded Agatha. “ We will sub- 
due our own faults as best we can in some king- 
dom of the sea, and withhold ourselves from 
finding fault with our old-time neighbors.” 

The next day, in the grim November, there 
was a hunting-frolic, in which Lothrop rode in 
the front of the chase. Many a day Bernard 
and Agatha, with Robinson’s son Moses,^ and 
Esther Mayhew, tracked the fox over the sheeted 
fields; or perhaps smoked out a wolf-den; or 
practised firing at the grinning, humorous wolves, 
which sometimes sat down upon their tails, 

1 Tradition says that he was born among the bul- 
rushes, before any house was erected in Falmouth. 


THE ORDINARY AT SACHONESIT. 169 

looking around to laugh at the clumsy shooting 
done by Esther Mayhew and Agatha. The 
enormous wild-turkeys contributed to the fre- 
quent feasts of thanksgiving at the inn ; fat 
bucks were dressed for the table ; there was 
plenty to eat, and more to drink than appar- 
ently accords with the notions of propriety in 
vogue among the descendants of the innkeeper.^ 

Travellers’ tales enlivened the evening fire- 
side ; and every night brought some new guest, 
with a new chapter out of the world-life. And 
there were Indian hunters and fishermen, and 
idle braves, and well-conditioned women, and 
bright pappooses, from Acapesket, Ashimuit, 
Chapoquit, Kataumet, Quisset, Sipperwisset, 
Tateket, and Waquoit, — all friends of the happy- 
hearted Robinson at the Sachonesit. 

Agatha lingered the longer in this hospitable 
home, as if with a prescience of homelessness. 
Still she had high heart when her husband de- 
cided, after consulting with Mayhew and Robin- 
son, to begin a settlement upon Nantucket, 
which was then within the Dutch jurisdiction 
of New Amsterdam. If the prayer of Isaac 

1 One of whom has been honored with the chief magis- 
tracy of his native State. 


170 


AGATHA. 


Robinson, upon parting with these Pilgrims of 
the Pilgrims, was not so memorable as that of 
his father at Delft Haven, it was by its simplicity 
and faith like a voice sent heavenward and re- 
turning in echoing benediction. 


XVIII. 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 

LAD whom Agatha called Shears/’ for 



^ short, and sometimes Scissors/’ — Shear- 
jashub Bourne, — skippered the shallop in which 
the Anselms embarked at Nobsque for Chapawak. 
They found the Mayhews located at Edgartown. 
Here Agatha remained while her husband went 
to New Amsterdam, upon business connected 
with his occupancy of Nantucket. It was ar- 
ranged that he should have for his settlement a 
portion of the Dutch immigration of the next 
year ; and to forward this he sent long letters to 
Holland. Upon his return, although near mid- 
winter, Bernard and Agatha went to take pos- 
session of their new kingdom in the sea. 

They landed at Nopque; which is a little 
finger of sand, from six to twelve hundred feet 
wide, extending northwesterly from the west of 
Nantucket. It lies south of the ancient Tucker- 
nuckett or Bread Loaf Island, which acts as a 


172 


AGATHA. 


breakwater, so offering safe landing for canoes 
in ordinary weather. Moving along the sand- 
spit, perhaps an hour-and-a-half’s walk, they en- 
tered on the Great Neck between the deep coves 
of Maddequet harbor and that long pond which 
almost severs the west end of the island. Keep- 
ing to the pond side on the right, after two miles 
they crossed the frozen outlet of the pond and 
turned the head of the meadow on the left. 
Here they found a sweet spring amid the oaks 
close upon an open upland, not far from the 
Maddequet harbor, in the territory of Sachem 
Potconet. 

There is a little village to-day upon the very 
spot where Bernard and Agatha thought best to 
abide. The pleasant bay on the west is limited 
by Nopque over which the broad ocean could be 
seen, and the Bread Loaf; and it is sheltered 
upon the north by Eel Point, — the open sea en- 
tering between the Point and the Loaf. South 
from the spring lay the meadow, ice-clad. Less 
than a mile easterly, by crossing the great pond, 
extensive plains were encountered, well tim- 
bered. Northeast, were high lands or low hills, 
a little pond, and the Atlantic. The location 
cannot be forgotten : it was the home of Agatha. 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 


173 


When Bernard had fetched wood, kindled a 
fire, pat acorns on to boil, and set a few crabs to 
squittering upon the coals, Agatha and her 
husband were at home, — as much so as the In- 
dians. A neighboring squaw brought in a small 
basket of cranberries, and a half-dozen strings 
of dried pumpkin for sauce ; and bade them not 
to fear, since it was a mild season and food was 
not likely to be scarce. When they had gotten 
corn, and had set up a simple wigwam, — which 
was made more comfortable as the days went 
by, — and when the Indians had supplied them 
with game and with fish, and when it appeared 
that the God of Plymouth was no stranger to 
Nantucket, — then indeed were the exiles at 
home. 

The Indian population was not so large as it 
had been, or so large as would appear from the 
number of their villages. The authorities vary. 
One, not the best, gives us three thousand ; one, 
more to be relied upon, less than a thousand. It 
was probably between the two, — the population 
of the Vineyard being larger. The war between 
the eastern and western tribes a few years be- 
fore Mr. Anselm’s arrival, had swept off many ; 
and the pestilence (before the war) had dimin- 


174 


AGATHA. 


ished the people. It was a time favorable for 
white settlement. 

Agatha’s easy acquisition of the Nantucket 
dialect made her useful in the cumbrous negotia- 
tions for land ; and she had more knowledge of 
the sign language than her husband. More, 
rapid progress was made when Abraham, a 
younger brother of Isaac Robinson, arrived to 
aid Mr. Anselm’s work. But the time of the 
Indians was not worth much at that season of 
the year, when all nature was idle ; and it ap- 
peared that negotiations could not be hurried. 
There was plenty of talk, and many friends were 
made ; and the barbarous people showed the 
strangers no small kindness. 

Quick work was made, however, in erecting a 
good house of hewn logs and steep roof of thatch. 
And the founder of the new colony kept his eye 
out for whales ; and when the awkward creatures 
floundered in the shallows, and came ashore on 
the south side, a whale-house was built for boil- 
ing blubber. It was reached by crossing the 
great plains east and southeast of the Long 
Pond, at the distance of an hour’s brisk walk- 
ing ; and was not far from the mouth of Hum- 
mock Pond and that cove which makes inland 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 


175 


west of Nanahuma Neck. A Dutch flag was 
here nailed to a mast ; and the whales came 
ashore and surrendered at discretion. The Sa- 
chem, Altopscot, was paid handsomely for the 
spot where the flag flew ; and the honest Indians 
allowed it to fly, in tatters, long after Anselm left 
the island. 

Agatha, whose great mother-heart was never 
satisfied without a child in the house, was glad- 
dened one day by the arrival of that ray of sun- 
shine, Esther Mayhew ; who found in Mistress 
Anselm her teacher, during some months of 
schooling. 

In addition to an appearance of serenity, in 
some measure due to temperament, Bernard had 
by grace and mental habit acquired the power 
to make others happy around him, no matter 
how hard a battle he was waging within his own 
soul. That he was good company perhaps led 
Agatha the less to suspect his secret sorrows. 
To keep chime with his wife, who was always 
presenting new grounds for gratitude to God, he 
poured into the common lot of the household 
great store of genial humor, if not of brilliant 
wit. Great delight had they in their new home, 
where they could have everything their own way. 


176 


AGATHA. 


When the short sunshine of winter gave place to 
nightfall, the great fire on the hearth renewed 
the day. And if the wind howled drearily in a 
long storm, the sound was lost in the voice of 
song rising within the log-cabin. 

The very Indians gathered upon Saturday 
nights to hear the Puritan psalms. And the 
Sabbath-day hymn, in this kingdom in the sea, 
was, “ A mighty fortress is our God.” Even 
the maiden Esther, upon the holy day, conversed 
with the Indian women and children, — telling 
them that no one can snatch from the hand 
of the Saviour of men any who commit them- 
selves to Him. And Bernard Anselm addressed 
the warriors, declaring that the gates of hell can 
never prevail against the people of God ; nay, 
against one of them, — although he be alone in 
the battle. 

It was a winter tempered to those who were 
strangers in the island ; favorable to out-of-door 
life. Sometimes with her husband, often with 
her pupil, but frequently alone, Agatha tuned 
her mind by trying to catch the tones of sea. 
From her own door, all the morning there was 
deep color, — that blue which no painter can 
imitate, the light behind, the blue in front; 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 


17T 


and at noontide the sunbeams touched the un- 
easy waves, which uplifted new faces hour after 
hour to sparkle in the light in the unwearied 
dancing of the sea; and at nightfall tliere was 
the winter’s ruddy glow, after the golden sheen 
of sunset. But it was not mere color which 
drew the heart of Agatha toward the sea ; nor 
was it form, pleasing to the eye, — not the wide 
dominions of the curving and cresting waves, 
not the way of wind on the water, not the roll- 
ing vapor over the rolling billows, not the rough- 
edged horizon after a storm, nor the broken 
water everywhere and the masses of foam tossed 
upon the churning sea. Nor was it that line of 
mystery, the meeting-place of dark waters and 
the storm-gathering sky. Nor was it the mere 
rush and roar of breakers. It was that unceas- 
ing sound of the ocean, which sincp the morning 
of the creation had been filling the air of this 
kingdom in the sea, — a tone like the voices of 
numbers without number around the throne of 
God, now rising and filling the air with reso- 
nance, now so falling that one’s ear must be 
attent, but never dying, — it is as lifelong as 
the sea itself. It was this great tone of nature, 
— which is heard among the mountains and in 
12 


178 


AGATHA. 


great pine forests and in the melody of the sea, 
— which spoke to the heart of Agatha, as if 
a voice from the great White Throne, — the 
Creator of the worlds calling day and night for 
human audience. It could not be all mere fancy, 
that it was easier for her to commune with God 
by the side of the ocean than far inland. 

There were some days in which Agatha needed 
to be reassured by celestial voices ; in which her 
half-hours for the discovery of causes of thank- 
fulness were changed to moments of sorrow. It 
was as impossible for her to keep out of mind 
the one great grief that had come to her 
home as to dispel the winter’s frost and the 
north wind by kindling a few fagots upon her 
hearth. And she bore to God whatever was 
bitter in her life. The experience she had of 
Rachel’s malignity at Plymouth and Nauset, and 
the knowledge she had acquired of that purpose 
of vengeance which seemed to be the regnant 
thought in the mind of the Jewess, made it clear 
to her that God had been kind in so separating 
Bernard from her, that his life-chances should 
not suffer with such a woman for his wife. 
Here was one definite ground for Agatha’s 
thankfulness. That Bernard also had an abid- 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 


179 


ing sense of gratitude for this, was plain from 
the quiet insistence with which he often spoke of 
the divine favor to them in their mutual love in 
wedded life. 

“ He cannot,” reasoned Agatha, “ without in- 
delicacy converse with me about the Jewess, as 
if she were often in his thoughts ; yet I need 
no daily assurance from him that he is glad God 
brought good out of evil in carrying him to my 
father’s house in Leyden. Although he believes 
himself guilty in forsaking her, she was such a 
woman that he could be little blamed for it, — 
and in any event her mother was a dreadful 
creature. While, then, I pity the woman who 
now so wrongs him, I cannot keep her much 
in my thought even for the purposes of pity. 
She has gone from bad to worse.” 

Then Agatha gazed far off toward the sea’s 
horizon. Her. sympathetic heart — the heart of 
a painter or musician, easily touched by the 
changing aspects of nature — could not entirely 
shut out the thought of poor Rachel. Once, for 
a moment, the thought flashed through her mind, 
thrilling her with a strange sense of woe, — 
“ What if I had been abandoned, with a dying 
child in my lap ? ” Then she clenched her 


180 


AGATHA. 


teeth, and said, — “I should curse Bernard.” 
Then the thought passed from her mind like 
the memory of a flash of lightning, cutting a 
strange figure upon a dark cloud, then never 
seen again ; she would not see it, that thought 
which withered her soul like fire. She deter- 
mined not to think of anything which would lead 
her into the belief that her husband had acted 
wickedly. 

Agatha arose, — strong English woman that 
she was, — and went about her domestic duties; 
and left the horizon of the sea and the vivid 
lightning-flashes above it to unroll in pitiless 
panorama of woe to the gulls skimming the 
sea. But the great black tea-kettle hanging 
over the fire then sang to Agatha in the low 
musical voice of Rachel, “You stole Bernard 
from me.” And then it was written in letters 
of fire upon the glowing forestick, “You were 
guilty, to rob Rachel.” 

“ Methinks that I am in a most unwholesome, 
and almost morbid frame of mind to-day,” said 
the Puritan woman. “ If there could be the 
slightest hope that the unhappy creature could 
be turned to a better mind, it might be my duty 
to pray for her. But it is not usual for God’s 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 


181 


Spirit so to work. Such hardened wretches as she, 
— who has despised the image of God in which 
she was created, who tramples upon her natural 
instincts as a woman, — usually reach their help- 
less, despairing state by first resisting all the 
strivings of God’s Spirit; and they are, as I 
suppose, given over to blindness of mind.” 

‘‘ Given over ? ” sounded in the ears of Agatha. 
It was in a low musical voice, as if Rachel had 
spoken. It was Agatha’s own morbid imagi- 
nation. 

After preparing the midday meal, and setting 
the afternoon tasks for her pupil, Agatha walked 
abroad in the inclement weather. 

“ I have not seen visions, or heard strange 
voices,” she argued with herself. “ But the 
truth is that I must be anxious about the out- 
come of affairs, so long as this wicked woman 
is dogging the steps of my husband.” 

Walking rapidly and inhaling the cool air, she 
recalled the course of recent days. Had she not 
neglected out-of-door life ? Did she not need the 
renewing influences of contact with nature ? Had 
her prayers been remiss ? Did she not need con- 
tact with God ? 

Conscience, when quickened by the Divine 


182 


AGATHA. 


Spirit, detects sin where men in whom the 
light that is in them is darkness can see noth- 
ing wrong. Agatha’s conscience was of great 
power, like some compound microscope, — which 
first appeared in the world in her own school- 
days. No man can polish a surface upon which 
the microscope will not find defects. Agatha 
could not so prepare her soul religiously as to 
satisfy her own conscience. She suffered ex- 
quisite torture for the sin of ingratitude, for her 
failures in self-sacrifice ; so now she endured 
untold horror because she discovered in herself 
a lack of perfect charity and unselfish love toward 
poor Rachel. She thought that there passed 
within the field of her spiritual microscope a 
faint trace of an unforgiving spirit. 

“ Who can say,” asked Agatha with downcast 
eyes, not lifting up her face toward heaven, “ but 
that in heaven an unforgiving spirit is reckoned 
a spiritual impurity, as much as physical lust 
and the pride of life?” 

“ Our Father,” she uttered, kneeling amid the 
low cedars, “ forgive me as I forgive Rachel, if 
she has done me wrong or wronged Bernard. 
And may she sin no more. Keep her from im- 
purity and from exercising the spirit of revenge. 


AT HOME IN THE SEA. 


183 


‘‘Now, 0 Father, freely forgive me, as I freely 
forgive her. Behold me tortured by a sense of 
sin. I stand aghast as I look into my soul, and 
see how little of God there is in it. I see myself 
at an immeasurable distance from Thee. 

“ Am I not wounded ? Blessed Samaritan, 
heal me. Am I not the wandering child, not 
worthy to call Thee my Father? Make me 
one of Thy meanest servants. I am the lost 
sheep. O seek, and save me. Bring me home, 
Lord, unto Thy heavenly fold.’’ 


XIX. 


THE OAKS OF WESKO. 

"D OTTEN PUMPKIN POND, where the merry 
Indian hoys used to fight a pitched mid- 
winter battle with decayed vegetables of every 
sort raised upon the island, is about half-way 
between the site of Anselm’s whale-house and 
the oaks of Wesko. At least once a week he 
passed it in taking his constitutional. 

The route varied from time to time. He 
called it a hunting-trip, and often secured other 
game than his own wild thoughts. The Arctic 
tern, or a brace of barnacle geese ; and, rarely, 
the auk ; and once even the king eider, — he 
brought home from the waters upon either side 
of the Nanahuma. He secured a fine specimen 
of the snowy owl near the pond where the 
Indian boys were to exhibit their annual pump- 
kin frolic next day. Agatha and Esther often 
accompanied him, as upon this occasion ; and 
by no small practice became experts in gunning. 


THE OAKS OF WESKO. 


185 


experts also in catching the rollicking Indian 
youth, and inoculating them with such ideas 
peculiar to Christian civilization as could be 
made most easily to take in the Indian mind. 

Wesko, the great Indian village, upon the 
present town-site at Nantucket Harbor, scarcely 
more than five miles due east from Maddequet, 
was good for twelve, fifteen, or even twenty miles 
of walking with a gun, by going one way and 
returning another. Crossing the frozen meadow 
south of his house, Bernard went down the 
Great Neck and followed the south shore to 
his lookout and flag ; or found his way to the 
same point by crossing the Long Pond and 
the plains ; then moved northeast, over the 
Smooth Hummocks, past the Burnt Swamp and 
Kotten Pumpkin Pond, over the Popsquatchet 
Hills, then leaving Wesko to the right, coming 
to the great oaks north of the village. The 
whole island was well wooded two hundred and 
fifty years ago, the oak predominating. That 
area north and a little west of north from Wesko, 
comprising the district between the lights now 
standing, the Flagroot and No Bottom ponds, 
the Lily Pond, and the harbor, was then one 
vast grove of immense trees, some of which 


186 


AGATHA. 


had stood for many centuries. The undergrowth 
was kept down by annual fires, so that the 
summer grass completely covered the floor of 
the forest. 

The Oaks of Wesko afforded the lunch place 
for Bernard’s gunning excursions ; and Agatha 
and Esther were sometimes of his company, — 
perhaps reaching the rendezvous by some other 
path than that trodden by the solitary huntsman. 

If he had not reached the spot by the north 
shore, he returned that way ; either a mile inland 
by Wagutuquab Pond and the Long Pond Gut; 
or, more commonly, along the cliff north of 
Wannacomet (which was one of the best of 
the Indian farming districts), then, passing the 
small ponds, following the high ridges beyond ; 
this walk, of somewhat more than an hour, being 
the better when extended to two or three, — 
overlooking the savage landscape and the broad 
back of the Atlantic, or going down to follow 
the lonely beach, amid the noise pf the rollers 
surging upon the desolate shore. 

These wild ways differed little from the paths 
followed by Dante in Malebolge. It would be fool- 
ish to justify or even analyze the morbid spirit- 
ual life of the men of a former generation, even 


THE OAKS OF WESKO. 


187 


when great transgressions sought constant rec- 
ognition, — “My sin is ever before me.” Still, 
no hunter’s way through the wild, and no sighing 
sand, when trodden by the guilty and despairing, 
can fail to interest all men who are engaged in a 
sharp contest with themselves. “ Lo, the ocean- 
billows murmur loud in one accord with him ; 
the sea-depths groan ; and fountains of the riv- 
ers, flowing clear, wail the sad tale of woe.” 

“ He who is of one pulse with all mankind, his 
heart beating with the great heart of humanity, 
must sometimes writhe under the torture of con- 
science,” — this was Bernard Anselm’s comment 
upon those dreadful pages in Dante’s Inferno in 
which the reptilian nature of sin is set forth. 
The new devilish suggestions arising daily in 
his own mind seemed to him even worse than 
the daily mangling of his soul by the sharp thorns 
of old sins, which would never cease to goad 
him. That others might come to know his 
thoughts — even though it should cause God’s 
children to stumble — was less a grief to him 
than the fact that he had such thoughts. 

His anguished conscience placed before his 
mind, with horrible distinctness, the fact that 
in all human probability he had murdered a 


188 


AGATHA. 


human soul. The hopeless words of Rachel had 
not ceased to ring in the ears of Bernard ; so 
that he pictured to himself the horrors of perdi- 
tion which had been portrayed in such ghastly 
detail by the mediaeval preachers ; and he thought 
upon Rachel stumbling along in the way of death. 

“ But for me,’^ he said, “ her life might have 
been measurably a blessing, not an immeasura- 
ble curse. Why is this uneasiness of my moral 
sense so late, when I ought to have been self-tor- 
tured years ago? A wrong once done is done 
forever ; and it is loudly calling for a sense of 
shame to follow, — for remorse, or some atone- 
ment. I stand condemned at my own tribunal. 
The wrong of yesterday is wrong to-day ; and it 
will be wrong to-morrow, and in a hundred years 
from now. No right-doing can make right the 
wrong. I need to repent, and to be made at one 
with God.’’ 

Like a blind boy feeling for a sunbeam, he 
sought for the light of God’s countenance, — hav- 
ing hope, in his low crying, that One might hear 
him : — 

“ My sins are more in number than the sands 
of the sea ; they have taken hold upon me that I 
am not able to look up. 


THE OAKS OF WESKO. 


189 


“ How can I amend myself without Thee ? 
No angel upon the earth, not even she whom 
Thou hast given as my keeper, and no angel in 
heaven knows how wicked I am ; but Thou know- 
est me altogether. I bury my face in shame. 

“ But Thou art in the heart of all those that 
confess to Thee, and weep in Thy bosom after all 
their rugged ways. With inward groanings I 
knock at Thine ears, and with a settled faith cast 
my care on Thee. 

“ Look Thou in great pity upon Rachel ; whose 
mother may have influenced her for evil even 
before her birth. Thou knowest. Her life I 
myself have blighted. Is she yet beyond the 
reach of Thy recreating Spirit ? ” 


XX. 


’SCONSET. 


HEN it came the season for the singing 



^ ^ of birds, Mr. Anselm’s work was likely 
to be forwarded by moving some dozen miles in 
an air-line to the sunrise margin of the kingdom 
in the sea. Abraham Robinson established a 
fishing-stage beyond the great and little Mioxes, 
being some four miles to the eastward of the 
blubber-station at a point called Weweder, from 
the configuration of the pond near by, which 
forked like a pair of horns. Between this pond 
and the Miacomet water westerly, an extensive 
area was fenced for sheep ; and here land was 
prepared for cultivation. 

Mr. Anselm and his wife, however, gave their 
attention to the erection of an Indian meeting- 
house, about a mile inland, near the large village 
where Altopscot made his home. Agatha’s ac- 
quaintance with the Indian work of the May- 
hews, and the long conversations of Bernard 


^SCONSET. 


191 


with the Indians, made it seem quite feasible to 
establish a mission. And to this much thought 
was given, and no small amount of time, during 
their stay upon the island. This house was 
about two hours’ walk from Siasconset where 
they established themselves, — the first residents 
of this delightful summering-place. 

They had come now within the bounds of 
Sachem Wanackmamack ; and ’Sconset was a 
good point from which to examine at ^ leisure 
the resources of East Nantucket, and conduct 
such negotiations as might seem desirable. 
Their abiding was at the west end of what is 
now ’Sconset village, the Sunset Heights. Ber- 
nard and Agatha went about the island like 
children at play ; delighting in their isolation, 
and in such spiritual companionship as they 
believed to be vouchsafed to them. 

Bloomingdale was the name they gave to a 
locality not quite a mile west of Sunset Heights, 
that region of flowers north of Tom Never’s 
swamp as it is now called. Broad beds of vio- 
lets, and azaleas in great abundance, the maiden- 
hair fern, so like a flower running wild, roses 
red, white, and damask, and the flower-de-luce, 
were notable in their season. The squirrels and 


192 


AGATHA. 


rabbits were undisturbed ; but the birds, as the 
flowers of the air, were gathered and compared 
with those of Europe, — the oriole, the scarlet 
tanager, the belted kingfisher, the golden wood- 
pecker, and the sparrow-hawk. The call of the 
catbird interested these out-of-door people in 
their new world, as much as the song of the 
meadow-lark. 

That severe old Indian who did not like boys, 
Saul, who dwelt among the hills within an easy 
hour’s walk northwest from Bernard Anselm’s 
cottage of logs, had a warm side toward his 
^ genial Dutch guest and his English wife, as they 
often spent an hour at his wigwam upon the 
highest point in the mid-island. These hills 
which still bear the name of Saul, were then 
covered with a greater variety of timber than 
could be found elsewhere ; the beech and walnut 
doing their best to crowd out the oaks, and the 
maples having quite their own way in the im- 
mediate neighborhood of the wigwams. And it 
was noticeable that the small red-cedar, about 
three feet high with branches straggling on the 
ground, sometimes seen in Maddequet, was here 
very common. The Shawkemo hills, a mile 
further on toward Wesko, were at that time 


^SCONSET. 


193 


unwooded and cultivated; the light dry soil 
offering good corn-land for a wet season. 

In going over to Wesko one day, Bernard met 
Deacon Doane, and ’Siah tugging at the Dea- 
con’s little finger. They were emigrating with 
two shallop-loads of Pilgrims to Connecticut. It 
was an age of leisure, — the voyage from Boston 
to the New England Thames requiring some- 
times a fortnight. Simeon Leathers, and Hope- 
still, his wife, were seen by Agatha, trucking with 
a squaw for some finely dressed skins. That 
Miss Oldum should have condescended to make 
off with poor Peggy Blossom’s new and only beau 
was indeed a pity ; but Hopestill was happy. 

“Yes, I’m married,” said Mrs. Leathers to 
Agatha in a confidential way, when Simeon’s 
back was turned ; “ and when my husband dies, 
I mean to marry again, and so on, and keep 
marrying ; don’t you ? ” 

“What’s that book you have in your basket?” 
returned Agatha. 

“ Oh, that ’s what Elder Tart gave us. It was 
one of our wedding presents. He said it was 
nice reading for young married couples. But I 
find it serious; and Simeon, my husband you 
know, don’t like it. So we intend to trade it off 
13 


194 


AGATHA. 


to some powwow for a medicine charm, if we 
can find one who wants it. I Ve no use for it, 
now that I ’m married.’’ 

Bernard bought the book. It was “ The Con- 
fessions of Saint Augustine.” 

“What’s that you are doing?” asked the Dea- 
con, who had just procured a. basket of fresh 
turnips. 

“I have bought the bishop of Hippo, worth 
his weight in gold any day,” replied Bernard, 
with an unusual light in his eyes. 

“To be sure,” said the Deacon, taking the 
“ Confessions ” in his hand. “ Allow me, then, 
to add to your library. You must be short of 
books in your kingdom, to read that. Come 
down to the landing, and let us but go out to the 
shallop, and Mrs. Doane will give Agatha a folio 
of old Dominican sermons. We need the room 
for our vegetables and new truck. I’d rather 
have turnips any time than Tauler. Come on.” 

Agatha was more glad to see Mrs. Doane’s 
baby than John Tauler’s eighty-four sermons. 
Nevertheless, the mother being more willing 
to part with the book than the baby, Agatha 
took Tauler, and was content as she could be. 
Agatha’s half-hour’s chat with a white woman 


^SCONSET. 


195 


was very satisfactory. Discovering Mordecai 
among the emigrants, she learned all about Jok 
and the youngsters of Nauset. 

They had been rather short of books in Nan- 
tucket, and John Tauler and Augustine were 
made to feel very much at home upon the island ; 
indeed, they bore an honorable part in the settle- 
ment of New England. 

“ King David himself missed something, that 
would have made it worth while for him to live 
long upon the earth like a wandering Jew,” said 
Agatha one evening, to Bernard, as they were 
flattening down a small area of beach-grass 
by lying upon it, first here then there, upon 
the ’Sconset Heights, overlooking the ocean 
eastward. 

“ What is your riddle ? ” asked Bernard. 

He would have been highly honored, and 
instructed, could he have known Saint Augus- 
tine,” was the answer. ‘‘ But why do I prize 
his words ? ” 

“ Tell me why ; then I will tell you why he 
is so dear to me.” 

“ He makes God very great,” replied Agatha. 
“ He has a living God to whom to cling, a God 
able to keep him.” 


196 


AGATHA. 


And I think of him,” said Bernard, “ as 
needing to cling. He is as frank as the Psalm- 
writer in showing his whole heart. When jou 
read him, it is easy to infer the worst, — which 
is the secret of his strong hold of those readers 
who know that they are sinners, and who desire 
to mend.” 

“ I believe that it is so,” responded his wife, 
“ with the most popular poets in all ages. They 
win the sympathy and confidence of mankind, 
by openly revealing their human infirmities as 
well as aspirations.” 

“ What should you say if your English play- 
wright Shakspeare, who spent so much time in 
pot-houses, should some day come to no small 
fame as a poet, perhaps the very poet the ages 
have been waiting for ? He seems to know all 
about the temptations of the worst of men, and 
he writes about them with a friendly sympathy 
as if he understood them.” 

“ And then,” answered Agatha, “ he always 
sets over against them high ideals of character, 
who still are very human in their frailties.” 

“We should not look for the elements of a 
poem in Augustine’s ‘ Confessions ; ’ but here they 
are. Shakspeare would have composed a drama 


^SCONSET. 


197 


that would have made the world ring with his 
fame, could he have set forth the sins of Augus- 
tine, and his mother’s prayers, and his own re- 
pentance, and his life-long struggles with himself, 
and the great achievement of his self-conquest. 
Just read what Augustine says about himself.” 

“ I have read it all. And it has touched me 
very much. Luther was like him, as open- 
hearted as a great overgrown boy talking freely 
with his mother. I find Augustine confessing 
his lying, his thefts, his impurity when he was 
a boy, and his impurity of thought when he was 
a man, as if all mankind might know it if they 
cared to. Here we are reading it upon the 
verge of this solitary ocean, more than a thou- 
sand years after he has put on his crown and 
heavenly robe.” 

‘‘ And I do not see why the worst things about 
us should be concealed from men; as we can 
never conceal them from God. Tauler has it,” 
said Bernard, reading, — ‘ It is to be counted as 
spiritual unchastity when a man seeks himself 
too much.’ ” 

“ I will tell you, Bernard, that which troubles 
me the most. It is certain that we fight not 
with flesh and blood, but with principalities and 


198 


AGATHA. 


powers ; so that even if dusky circles of demons 
do not fill the air around us, as some think they 
do, we are nevertheless always fighting spiritual 
wickedness in high places. Now on my part I 
cannot for my life see how, when we are every 
one ‘ standing on the lowest steps of a dying 
life,’ as Tauler phrases it, any one is to be 
reckoned as better than another, or classified as 
more respectable on account of the kind of sin 
of which he is guilty before God. Uncleanness 
we call abominable ; but our Saviour applies 
this adjective to many things highly esteemed 
among men. It must be that from the divine 
standpoint any soul turning from God is impure 
in a spiritual sense; so that such respectable 
sins as envy and anger are unclean in heavenly 
society. Do you not remember how vivid is the 
Old Testament imagery, which declares, — with 
a plainness which implies a low state of morals 
in the Jewish church, — that mere separation 
in affection from the Heavenly Bridegroom is 
adulterous. We are all, in this Scriptural sense, 
unclean. Morally, what else are we than mere 
lepers ? Pardon me, Bernard, if I do all the 
talking, under the pretence of conversation ; 
but I ’ve been trying to get my Christian philo- 


^SCONSET. 


199 


sophy and my Christian acts to keep step to- 
gether ; and I can no more do it than I can fly. 
I Ve been seriously attempting to get into such 
frame of mind that I shall not hate Rachel ; 
and I cannot do it. And I suppose that God 
looks upon my unforgiving spirit as being as 
much out of tune with the harmony of the uni- 
verse as anything she does.” 

“ Well, I do suppose,” replied Bernard, drawing 
a long breath, “ that in founding our kingdom 
in the sea, we are to found it in self-conquest, 
else we shall never be fit to sit upon thrones. 
So that you will have to overcome your hatred 
of her. She is no doubt a means of grace to 
us both. But she is not so bad as I am, who 
imposed myself upon your companionship, nay 
your friendship, your love, when I was morally 
fit only to keep company with Rachel in some 
outer darkness.” 

“ Have I not told you, do I need to tell you 
again,” asked Agatha, “that I loved you, not 
for your sake but my own ? ” 

“ If you loved me unconsciously, it was like 
the spontaneity of the sunlight in illuminating 
the world.” 

“ Certainly,” said the wife, “ that is a good 


200 


AGATHA. 


figure. And the sun is conscious of observing 
no defects in that which it shines upon. The 
rays of my love cannot be' turned aside from you 
by any defects you may fancy yourself to have.” 

‘‘ By parity of reasoning, we ought to love 
the unloved,” returned Bernard, — “ love them 
in spite of their defects.” 

“ That must we leave to God,” quoth Agatha. 
“ The Infinite Charity can do it. I cannot do 
it. You see me as I am, whether or not at my 
worst. I cannot even pray for Rachel with any 
heart, or take personal interest in her salvation. 
It does not seem to me that, concerning so vile 
a creature, there are outstanding decrees elect- 
ing her to salvation. What can I do ? I am 
sure I do not know. If I had less respect for 
your manliness when you first told me about her, 
you must now have less respect for my Christian 
spirit when I speak so. You, I love with an over- 
mastering affection. I must love you, as the sun 
must shine. But do not ask me to take the least 
interest in that unclean creature.” 

“I do not ask you. But the God who led 
me, upon my leaving the house of Levi, to your 
father’s house, can lead Rachel; and I pray 
most earnestly that He may do it. What is 


^SCONSET, 


201 


wrong in a woman is wrong in a man. What 
is a life-long shame in a woman is a life-long 
shame in a man. I am every whit as bad as 
she, — barring repentance ; and she may be peni- 
tent for aught I know, and be absolutely power- 
less to break off from her sins, — just as it is 
hard for me. Now, what is salvation for a man 
is salvation for a woman. God is as well able to 
arrest her in her guilty career as to stop me in 
mine. I am guilty of her mortal sin, if she dies 
impenitent.” 

“No, you are not guilty. She alone shall bear 
it. God holds every soul separately responsible. 
She destroys herself.” 

“ I believe,” returned Bernard, “ that she in- 
herited from her mother the arts by which she 
ruins the souls of men.” 

“ That is all wrong,” retorted Agatha. “ No 
background of woe behind her can extinguish 
her individuality. She is responsible for her 
own career. The final Judge is just, and will 
make allowance for all the influences which 
surrounded her, that were never of her choosing. 
You did well to arise and flee for your soul’s life ; 
else she would have dragged you down with her.” 

“ No, but, Agatha, we must not limit the power 


202 


AGATHA. 


of the Almighty, mighty to save. He may overrule 
this evil to her good, — breaking up her hardened 
soul by the plow-share of this great sorrow.” 

“ Pray you, then ; but excuse me from pray- 
ing for her. I entertain no grudge, although 
there be more cause for it than you know. I 
forgive her, but I cannot love her.” 

“ Now let us have John Tauler,” said Bernard, 
opening the book. “ ‘ They ought ’ he says, ‘ to 
cherish love toward all, both good and bad ; 
and not remain absorbed in partial and separate 
affections, living alone in heart. They keep 
their ordinances, but do not keep the law of 
love, or die unto themselves.’ Pardon me, 
Agatha, my insistence. I know that there is 
but a step between me and Bacliel. I have 
moved into the light; she is still within the 
shadow of death. If the light of the sun might 
shine upon her, the shadow now surrounding 
her would be absorbed in the light. We can 
at least pray for the light to shine upon her 
in her dark ways, that she may see her way to 
walk out of them.” 

“When you pray for her, you will perhaps 
pray that my heart may be softened toward her,” 
said Agatha. “Am I not often conscious of 


^SCONSET. 


203 


being absent from God, and far from the per- 
fection of charity ? The love of God I know 
to be infinite ; but I know myself to be proud, 
vain, and uncharitable. In God’s sight, I make 
no doubt I am as vile as that woman whose 
very name I hate.” 

“ Do not speak that way,” exclaimed Agatha’s 
husband. ‘‘ Methinks the enemy of mankind 
lives hard by the moaning seas of ’Sconset. You 
must leave all morbid sensations to me. You 
are a child of the light.” 

“ 0 Ansel, you are indeed the ‘ protection of 
God.’ There is a balm in the tears of penitence ; 
and I often refresh my soul in secretly sorrow- 
ing over my sins before God alone. Conscience 
never pardons, but God pardons, — and I thank 
Him for that.” 

“ You know, Agatha, my temperament. I am 
sometimes despondent and morbid from phys- 
ical causes ; and this cannot be removed by reas- 
oning, any more than a syllogism can cure the 
headache. You say to me at such times, — 
‘ Looking into your heart will not clear up 
doubts, but looking unto Jesus.’ But my un- 
wholesome continuity of self-accusation cannot 
be cured that way.” 


204 


AGATHA. 


How then ? asked Agatha, forgetting her- 
self. 

I am now in the quicksands, now on the 
Rock,” continued Bernard. “ But it is like the 
daystar of hope rising upon my darkened soul, 
or like the rising sunlight as it dispels the mists 
of the morning, when I see you supremely happy 
every day. How can I remain long in an un- 
wholesome mental state, with you at my elbow ? 
Is it not the joy of God which is your strength ? 
It is this which makes me strong. God rein- 
forces me ;,but He chooses to do it through you. 
My soul would be benumbed by hopelessness, 
were not the life and light and power of our re- 
ligion so exemplified in you. It is your life, so 
cheery — not your logic — which extends to me 
the helping hand.” 

Agatha bowed her head in silence ; and her 
lips moved as if in prayer. Then she arose and 
said, — “It was when I was a little child that my 
father taught me the saying of Saint Gregory, 
that sadness is one of the seven capital sins. 
My mother was more moody than my father, by 
natural constitution. I am tinged with my 
mother’s temperament ; and my variable frames 
and feelings are like the shining and the shadow 


^SCONSET. 


205 


we have seen all day passing over the plains of 
the sea. But our salvation consists not in 
frames and- feelings, but in being grafted on the 
living Vine, and abiding in Christ. It consists 
not even in our sensible hold on Him, but in 
our simple belief of his gracious declaration that 
He will never leave or forsake us, nor suffer 
us to be plucked out of His hand.” 

“ It has been one , of my day-dreams, and I 
sometimes think of it in the night,” spoke Ber- 
nard, in slowly measured words, “that I may 
sometime reach that point when I shall cease to 
think about myself and my state toward God, 
and be altogether absorbed in thinking of God’s 
love toward me.” 

“ It was when I first heard your sweet name, 
Anselm,” responded Agatha, in low tones and 
with downcast eyes, “ that I was reading the 
‘ Meditations and Prayers ’ of Saint Anselm. 
And a simple formula which I condensed from his 
directions comes often into my mind. I will re- 
peat it, and it shall be our good-night prayer : 
‘ If tliy God will judge thee, say, — Lord, be- 
tween my sins and Thee, between Thy wrath 
and me, I present the death of our Lord Jesus; 
nor otherwise can I contend with Thee.’ ” 


206 


AGATHA. 


“ Stay a moment. It is now eight hundred 
years that an old Latin hymn has been echoing 
in the sanctuaries of the Old World ; let us sing 
it in the New : — 

“ ‘ Great Comforter! to thee we cry"; 

O highest Gift of God most high 1 
O Fount of Life 1 O Fire of love I 
And sweet Anointing from above! ’ 


XXI. 


THE CAMP AT COSKATA. 

TT was an absurd idea for people who lived out- 
of-doors to go camping ; but that is what 
Agatha insisted on doing. Thej^ went to Cos- 
kata for a mid-sea resort, at the season of the 
autumnal equinox. 

Perhaps, in the absence of an outline map of 
the picturesque island, Nantucket cannot be 
better described than to say that it is a fishhook 
lying upon its back, — its back to the south, the 
shank, twenty miles long, including Muskeget 
where the line is to be attached, the lower part 
of the shank being three or four miles wide. 
Coskata is the point of the hook, — the long barb 
enclosing the great harbor. 

Agatha and Bernard were fascinated by the 
quaint configuration of their kingdom in the sea. 
And when the wonders of Sankoty, fir^t seen by 
Gosnold the discoverer, of Sesacacha, Squam, 
Pocomo, Podpis, and Quaise, of Tetankimmo 


208 


AGATHA. 


and Shimmo, began to wear a familiar look, 
they desired to know what else might be in the 
world of Coskata ; and struck out for the point 
of the hook, and the barb, Coatue. Rather it was 
a matter of business. They were ambitious to 
own their kingdom ; to buy it of the Indians, 
then allow them to live on at will, as usual. The 
summer negotiations had so prospered that Mr. 
Anselm was just now very anxious to secure the 
timely erection of fishing-stages at Pedee and 
Quidnet, — it being, as he was advised, only a 
little time before the first instalment of his Dutch 
settlers would appear. 

Wauwinet was the sovereign of all that part 
of the island east of a line running south from 
Wesko on the harbor, — except the southeast 
district, where Wanackmamack was sachem. 
Wauwinet was a powerful chief; whose domin- 
ions extended from the sea on the south to the 
harbor on the north, to the sea on the east, and 
included the point and barb of the great Nan- 
tucket hook. His seat in summer was at the 
Haul-over, between the head of the harbor and 
the Atlantic ; where the bridge of land was only 
a thousand feet wide, separating the still water 
from the surf. 


THE CAMP AT CO SKAT A. 


209 


After passing through the heavily timbered 
Squam country north of Sesacacha Pond, Mr. 
Anselm remained at the Haul-over to confer 
with the Sachem ; and Abraham Robinson occu- 
pied himself in preparations needful for the 
camping. Agatha and Esther strolled up the 
sand-spit of a mile or more to the Coskata 
area, which is a triangle, with sides measuring 
not far from a mile and a lialf. The Haul-over 
bridge of sand joins this triangle at the south- 
east ; the Coatue barb or harbor arm, at the 
southwest ; and the triangle north is terminated 
by a point two miles long, from one to two 
thousand feet wide ; this was Nauma. 

In girlish glee Agatha entered, with Esther, 
upon the exploration of this new region of what 
they hoped to make the Anselm kingdom. The 
bank of the outer beach, at brimming tide, looked 
out upon a quiet ocean basking in the sun’s warm 
light, which was disturbed only by the crests of 
breakers upon the shoals. As Esther had been 
so fortunate as to find the amethysts of Madde- 
quet, she was now more favored in plucking 
from the edge of the waves a perfect specimen 
of the shell commonly called the nautilus, or the 
Portuguese man-of-war. The beach for a long 
14 


210 


AGATHA, 


distance was iridescent with the broken shells, 
the mother-of-pearl, of these warsmen venturing 
into the northern seas. 

The Haul-over was then carpeted by grass, the 
meal-plum vine, and beach-ivy ; choke-berries, 
whortleberries, pitch-pine and oak made the long 
bridge of sand leading to Coskata very inviting, 

— swept as it was by the air of the ocean. The 
bittern, the heron, the fish-hawk, the yellow-leg, 
the black duck, and the shearwater were pursu- 
ing their avocations. The laughing gull and the 
golden plover attracted Agatha and Esther ; as 
they moved slowly along the enchanted way, 
now hand in hand, now gathering berries or 
flowers. They lingered long at a corn-patch, 

— roasting the ears with Indian women ; who 
proffered them as a token of hospitality, — it 
being the equivalent of extending the freedom 
of the city to strangers. 

As the tide dropped, the flats upon the har- 
bor’s edge were whitened with gulls ; and the 
squaws and their children were seen stooping 
for quahaugs. Far westward over the great 
deep a lane of sunbeams crossed the waters, 
followed by the purple and gold of sunset. Over 
the wild wildernesses, and seas not vexed by the 


THE CAMP AT CO SKAT A. 


211 


keels of merchants, shone those hues which glori- 
fied the world. The harbor — so crowded by the 
whalemen of later generations — was now dis- 
turbed only by the paddle-stroke of a single 
canoe, filled with laughing children of the 
woods. 

The forest, everywhere skirting the harbor, 
was growing darker, when Agatha sought the 
camping-place near the head of Coskata pond; 
a water-slieet half a mile long near the centre of 
the triangle. The growth was so dense that it 
afforded timber long after other parts of the 
island were stripped. Agatha looked for the 
moon, which would shed its full radiance in 
the more open parts of the forest as soon as 
daylight might fail. The murmuring sea had 
already lulled the birds to rest, when Agatha 
was startled by a, strange sound, — as if, in this 
hour of peace, some soul was enduring the 
agonies of the lost. It was the voice of Rachel. 
Agatha sent Esther to the camp-site, six or seven 
hundred yards distant ; but she herself remained 
until Bernard should come down the east side 
of the pond to meet her. 

The very voice of the outcast aroused such 
repugnance in her that Agatha was sure she 


212 


AGATHA. 


should not speak civilly, much less kindly, to 
the Jewess, even if she ventured to exchange 
a word with her ; so that she shrank back from 
the place whence the voice issued upon the twi- 
light air. It had been to Agatha one of the 
days in which simple delight in the world around 
her made her less mindful of the over-world. 
By some law which she did not care to analyze, 
the presence of the sweet maiden Esther had 
been turned into constant occasion of disquiet 
to the childless wife. The wine of life turned 
to vinegar that day, as if sea and sky and all 
the visible universe had no God in it. Indeed, 
when Agatha tried to pray, facing the eastern 
sea, it seemed to her that it was her own voice 
only which came back to her, like an echo re- 
bounding from the wall of an empty heaven. 
She felt disturbed that Bernard should care 
even to pray for the wretch who had been the 
mother of his unblessed child. Once — it was 
a wicked thought in Agatha — she had looked 
in the still water of a little pool dripping into 
the pond, to see her face reflected, — trying to 
discern whether her own features were attrac- 
tive. She knew that Rachel was beautiful, even 
in her demoniacal calling. 


THE CAMP AT COSKATA. 


213 


Little did the Puritan woman, rarely seeing 
her own image, know of her own beauty. It 
was not of earth or sky, but both, — a celestial 
fire kindling and glowing in her face ; an effect 
beyond the limner’s art to portray. Albeit, when 
the shadow of a selfish thought stole over the 
face of Agatha, and she thought of herself, 
her features lost something of their comeliness. 
“ Have I wasted my affections upon one who is 
unworthy ? ” was the question which once that 
day had flashed through the mind of Agatha, 
withering like lightning. Then an indefinable 
fear had mingled with her thoughts. Might 
there not be more to be dreaded in Rachel’s 
necromantic powers than she had thought ? 

Agitated by so many conflicting thoughts con- 
cerning her husband’s cast-off love, Agatha could 
not long keep aloof from the place where she 
heard the voice of the charmer ; so that, as 
if drawn by irresistible fascination, she finally 
approached the wigwam where Rachel was. It 
was under a wide-spreading oak, upon a little 
prominence by the water-side. Although Agatha 
had no sense of fear in forest paths in the night, 
she was conscious of slight timidity when she 
drew near. 


214 


AGATHA. 


The Jewess was reciting passages from a 
ritual : — 

“ 0 my God, before I was formed I was un- 
worthy ; dust am I in my life. Behold me 
before Thee, as a vessel full of shame and con- 
fusion. Blot out, through Thy great mercies, 
the sins which I have committed. 

“Verily I am not so bold-faced and stiff- 
necked as, in Thy presence, to say that I am 
righteous ; for, alas, I am numbered with those 
who have sinned. Through Thy mercies pardon 
my iniquity. 

“For sin by the stretched-forth neck of pride, 
For sin hy chattering lips, 

For sin by levitj^, 

For sin by a leering eye, 

For sin b3’ an envious e3'e, 

For sin by haught3' looks, — 

Oh, grant remission. 

“ For sin b3^ contumac3^. 

For sin by causeless enmit3q 

For sin by treacher3' to m3^ neighbor, 

For sin b3" tale bearing, — 

Oh, remit. 

“ I have spoken slander, 

I have framed falsehood, 

I have uttered lies. 


THE CAMP AT COSKATA. 


215 


I have acted wickedly, 

I have sinned designedly, 

I have caused others to err, — 

All my secret Thou dost know. 

“For all the sin I have committed in stubbornness 
of heart, 

“For all the sin I have committed by lewdness 
and by lewd assemblage, 

“For all the sin I have committed deliberately by 
evil cogitation in my heart, 

‘ ‘ For the sin which I have committed in Thy 
presence with defiled lips, 

“For the sin which I have committed in Thy 
presence by evil passions, — 

For all these. Thou God of pardon. Oh, for- 
give me. 

“ For all the sins I have committed by h^'pocritical 
confession, — Oh, forgive me. 

“For the sins for which I am enjoined to suffer 
the fort}^ flagellations, — Oh, forgive me. 

“ For the sins for which I am enjoined to incur the 
penalty by the hand of God, — Oh, forgive me. 

“ We have no king who doth pardon and forgive ; 
yea, no one but Thee, O Thou who art the Pardoner 
of Israel, and Remitter of sins unto the tribes, in all 
ages.” 

It might have been by long habit of praying 
at fixed hours, regardless of place and surround- 
ings, that made Rachel unsuspectful of any other 


216 


AGATHA. 


presence than that of the All-Father ; or it might 
have been the isolation of the locality. Be that 
as it may, it was as if she had here shut her- 
self into the place for orisons, and might here 
breathe audibly all her thoughts. “ The silence 
now mocks me,” she said after listening, “ as the 
winds mocked me yesternight.” 

' “ Has she, too,” thought Agatha, been pray- 
ing to No God ? ” 

Then Rachel listened again, as if some sleep- 
ing echo of hopes once uttered might be heard 
in the stillness of the evening hour. ‘‘0 my 
God, is there no hope for poor Rachel ? Must 
she always be a curse, and be cursed ? Will her 
vow never find its limit ? ” 

Then the lost woman, slowly turning, with 
eyes upturned swept the whole circuit not of 
the earthly horizon but of the skies, — as if, 
were Jehovah still silent, an answer might come 
from some planet just appearing in the deepening 
twilight. 

Agatha could now see, by the western light 
reflected from the water, that Rachel’s face was 
dead to hope ; that her heart was wrung with 
anguish ; that her features were debased by 
those passions which habitually bore sway in 


THE CAMP AT CO SKAT A. 


217 


the soul of the degraded woman. The despair- 
ing look with which Rachel searched the skies, 
where dwelt an unanswering God, made Agatha 
shudder; and that wretched countenance, indi- 
cative of a dreary and horrible life, forsaken 
of God and man, haunted Agatha for months 
whenever she thought of Rachel. Those fixed, 
despairing eyes of the lost woman conscious of her 
woe, Agatha often saw if waking in the night. 

The outcast now threw herself upon her face 
toward the East : “ 0 God to whom vengeance 
belongeth, is it not within Thy knowledge that 
there is only one release from my unholy vow ? 
May not the returning love of Bernard restore 
me to my normal life ? If Thou shalt still with- 
hold that, 0 God of Justice, smite Thou him with 
madness and blindness and astonishment of 
heart ; that he may grope at noonday, as the 
blind groping in the darkness, — that he may 
not prosper in his ways. Even though he out- 
runs the embodiment of earthly fury, and out- 
strips the avenging one, let him have no wings 
to fly from Thee.” 

Agatha waited long; but Rachel moved not. 
When the moments swiftly flying deepened the 
shadows, and illuminated portions of the forest 


218 


AGATHA. 


with the moonbeams, Agatha came nigh unto 
Rachel, and heard her low sobbing upon the lap 
of earth. 

Rachel ! Rachel ! Is there no place for re- 
pentance, though you seek it with tears ? 

‘‘ Agatha ! Agatha ! disturb me not. The 
New Year of God’s people is at hand ; and my 
vows are upon me. I must be alone with God. 
If not with God, then with the spirit of my 
father, who binds me each year afresh by 
ghostly vow.” 

“ Rachel ! Rachel ! follow not the paths of 
darkness. Leave vengeance to God, to whom it 
belongeth.” 

“ Agatha,” exclaimed Rachel, with much reso- 
lution, rising to her feet, “ you know not what 
you do. The adversary is at hand, who is at 
this hour accusing the people of God. He whose 
name is above every name this night weighs the 
merits and demerits of every human soul. I 
must prepare my account.” 

“ You need indeed to prepare your account, 
if you undertake to seize the sceptre of Jehovah, 
and rule in His stead, wreaking vengeance for 
your own wrongs, and carrying out your own 
hate in the name of the Holy One of Israel.” 


THE CAMP AT COSKATA. 


219 


“ Be silent, Agatha. Could you but CQunt the 
tears of the heart-broken, the regrets and self- 
reproaches of one who is a wanderer, — whose 
rightful home you enjoy ; could you know the 
mental uncertainty, the hell within, the hope- 
lessness of one whose wifely place you hold 
with firm grip, — you would at least not disturb 
me in the hour of my devotions.” 

“Your story, Rachel, is to me inexpressibly 
painful,” said Agatha, seeing the necessity for 
terminating the untimely interview, which she 
could not do without saying frankly what was 
in her mind ; “ but no small part of the pain 
arises from your own voluntary course, in fol- 
lowing a life which your own moral sense does 
not approve. Do you not need voluntarily to 
break off from what you know to be wicked ? 
If you would do that, then your condition would 
be more hopeful. If you do not do that, you 
have no more force of character than a shell- 
fish. Is it not the best use which you can 
make of your Jewish New Year, to repent, — 
not by ritual, but by actually turning from your 
sins?” 

“ What do you mean ? ” fiercely replied the 
Jewess, the hot blood mounting to her dark face. 


220 


AGATHA. 


“ I have at least as vigorous a personality as I 
need ; as you do well to know/’ 

“ I thought so,” returned Agatha coldly. 
‘‘ Grace cannot do anything without gumption. 
If you have any moral will-power still remain- 
ing, I am glad of it. Your sharp individuality, 
shrewdness, sagacity, all your strength of soul 
needs to be used in repenting of your own per- 
sonal sins. No one else is going to stand in 
your place to bear the blame of the wickedness 
justly chargeable to you personally, in the Great 
Day of final account. 

“ Is there, Rachel, no time or place for a child 
to live her own life, separate from her father 
and mother ? Had my own Anglo-Saxon ances- 
tors bound their children and their children’s 
children after them, by great oaths to carry out 
forever their own courses of cruelty toward your 
nation, I should present myself before you now, 
under obligation to burn you at the stake. Is it 
not true that sometime, somewhere, every Anglo- 
Saxon child, who has ever been desirous of 
being better than his grandfather, has felt at 
liberty to act for himself ? It is unreasonable 
and wicked in you, personally, to spend life in ful- 
filling the wicked vow which was imposed upon 


THE CAMP AT COSKATA. 


221 


you. He that is wise is wise for himself. Every 
man shall bear his own burden. Every man 
liveth unto himself and dieth unto himself. 
And every man must give an account of himself 
unto God.” 

These words of Agatha were spoken in de- 
cided, telling tones, which were not lost upon 
the dispirited Rachel. 

“ I have the utmost contempt,” added Agatha, 
following up her advantage in a lower key, “ for 
a woman who has contempt for herself. Self- 
respect is fundamental to salvation. In the econ- 
omy of grace, God will not help you unless 
you also turn to and help yourself. You can 
help yourself in no other way so truly as by at 
least trying to regain self-respect in your mode 
of life. Be a woman, and God will bless you. 
Be a woman, and the love of the living God 
will shine upon all your ways.” 

Bernard Anselm at this instant appeared. 

“ Leave me ! ” exclaimed Rachel, approaching 
him, with a shriek of terror which rang through 
the forests. “ Leave me 1 Through thee, I have 
lost my soul ! ” 

A loon’s cry, startling the silent harbor as the 
cry of the lost startled the silent forest, was 


222 


AGATHA. 


heard by Bernard and Agatha as they silently 
moved through the glades of the woodland 
toward the ocean. 

“ Is it not plain to you, 0 Agatha,” said Ber- 
nard, “ that 1 did wrong to forsake Rachel ? It 
was wrong toward her, as a child of immortality; 
wrong toward her, — whatever might have been 
the outcome to me in fulfilling my vow to marry 
her. I ought to have looked upon her as a 
woman endowed with the great boon of ever- 
lasting life. And I ought to have feared to do 
her wrong.” 

Agatha was long silent. She had been deal- 
ing with, a fallen daughter of the Most High. 
Had she dealt kindly ? Had she erred by sharp- 
ness of speech ? Her words were indeed true ; 
but were they timely ? Had she at the bottom 
of her heart no love for the lost ? The sympa- 
thy of the Man Christ Jesus for sinners now ap- 
pealed to her. Turning to Bernard, she said, 
“ It is written that ‘ he that loveth not abideth 
in death;’ if I had uttered words of love, they 
might have fallen as good seed.” 

Kneeling at their camp-fire, Bernard and 
Agatha united in one prayer : “ Behold, Lord, 
to-night, those who seek to arouse Thee from 


THE CAMP AT COSKATA. 


223 


slumber lest they perish. Say Thou, ‘ Peace, be 
still.’ O Thou, who didst command the winds 
and the sea, and there was a great calm, come 
Thou and walk upon the waves of our surging 
and moaning hearts ; and pity Thou all who are 
tempest-tossed and tempted, upon the sea and 
the land.” 


XXIL 


CROSSING THE DAM. 

UR dwelling is but a wandering, and our 



abiding but as a fleeting,’^ was the re- 
mark of Agatha to Bernard, when they were voy- 
aging to Martha’s Vineyard. Mr. Anselm sold 
out, to Thomas Mayhew, all his interest in the 
Nantucket lands for eighty-three pounds sterling 
and two beaver hats, — the hats to be paid to 
the Sachems Potconet and Altopscot. The ne- 
gotiations with Wanackmamack and Wauwinet 
had been brought to a sudden standstill by the 
intervention of Quinemiquet. Not long after, 
Macy and his Salisbury settlers came, to profit 
by the departure of Anselm. 

It was the easier for Bernard and Agatha to 
be broken up at this time, on account of the 
death of the senior Anselm, which rendered it 
important that a visit be made to Holland; 
whither the wife accompanied her husband. 

The soft sunshine, or the gray haze, of the 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


225 


cities of the North Sea, proved very grateful to 
those who had been living so long under the more 
brilliant skies of a new world. To Agatha, Ant- 
werp was a new city, — whose massive mercantile 
buildings crowded upon the plain of the Scheldt, 
and thousands of ships, and army of merchants, 
had as yet suffered little from the rise of the 
rival Hamburg. It was then that Agatha began 
first to call herself an American, living in the 
edge of a forest, seeking to plant a new civiliza- 
tion. And it seemed strange to her to be in a 
city, which had been more than eight hundred 
years in building, — long the chief commercial 
city of the world. 

Here they found Bernard’s brother Antony, 
who was to accompany them to Amsterdam. 
He was then at the height of his great fame ; 
which arose less from his eminent civil station 
than from his service to jurisprudence, his inves- 
tigation of first principles as exhibited in the laws 
of other countries, and his efforts to base the laws 
of Holland upon unchanging natural rights. 

During their brief stay in the city, Antony 
Anselm made a dinner party of merchants in 
honor of his brother Bernard. It renewed in 
the mind of Agatha the home feeling she had 


15 


226 


AGATHA. 


concerning Holland, that some of the older 
guests (who had been members of the congre- 
gation of the acute and learned Thomas Cart- 
wright when in exile at Antwerp) remembered 
her father, and extended to her and her husband 
many courtesies for Elder Brewster’s sake. 

Upon their way to the Zuyder Zee the trav- 
ellers tarried for a day at Leyden, — that fair 
and beautiful city of sweet situation. The green 
plains interlaced with water ribbons, which 
glistened under the sun or looked sullen under 
low-lying clouds; the red-roofed villages, the 
gardens, the orchards, surrounding the city ; the 
Leyden canals lined by willows and poplars, 
arched by wrought-stone bridges ; the roomy 
streets and squares; the handsome houses, and 
commanding public edifices ; the great artificial 
mound in the centre of the city, crowned by oak ; 
the ruined tower, hoar with age ; the busy cloth 
factories, the noisy quays, and the hum of varied 
industry, — all made Agatha glad that the home 
of tlie Pilgrims had once been upon the populous 
old Rhine before they settled upon the solitary 
sands of Plymouth and Nauset. The house 
where Pastor Robinson formerly lived had been 
torn down, and other buildings erected. The 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


22T 


local church had been broken up ; the most part 
— those too poor to incur the expense of going to 
America — having removed to Amsterdam. It 
was this wliicli dispelled the half-formed dream 
in the mind of Agatha, that she would almost 
be willing to make her home again in Holland, — 
perhaps at Leyden, the home of Jier happy girl- 
hood, to which she had so long looked back as 
the place where there was no sorrow. 

Of the great port of the Zuyder Zee, sitting 
upon its four-score and ten islands of salt marsh ; 
of the spider-web city whose canals running out 
from a centre are crossed by semi-circles of 
water flanked by trees and streets ; of the city 
tied together by almost as many bridges as 
there are days in a year ; of the city of endless 
windmills, of fantastically outlined buildings ; 
of the city where the poorest of the poor live 
in canal-boats with flower-gardens on deck, and 
the richest of the rich take their stand, like 
storks, upon piles driven into the marsh, and 
build their nests about them, — of Amsterdam 
Agatha remembered little, save an impression 
of her childhood, that the warehouses were 
filled with ingots of gold, and that the world’s 
wealth gravitated hither by natural law. 


228 


AGATHA. 


In his sense of domestic desolation in his own 
city, it was pleasing to Bernard that Grotius, 
who had been his fellow-student at Leyden 
under the tuition of Scaliger, had but just now 
landed in Amsterdam, upon his return from his 
long service of the Swedish king in Paris, en 
route for Hamburg. With him Antony Anselm 
had many interviews relating to legal questions, 
concerning which they had conducted a lengthy 
correspondence. This led to many enjoyable 
walks about the city. 

That famous statue of Erasmus, which turns 
over a leaf in the book he is reading whenever 
he hears the clock strike (related as it is to 
the world’s ending), was made the occasion 
one day of an interesting conversation concern- 
ing Erasmus’ “ Praise of Folly ” and his satiri- 
cal ‘‘ Colloquies,” and the former immorality of 
papal priests, and the improvement wrought 
by the Reformation. Bernard was questioned 
in regard to the influence of the Dutch Repub- 
lic upon the Pilgrims at Leyden, — Grotius re- 
marking that the love of liberty and hatred of 
popery in the second city of Holland could not 
have been without weight with those men who 
crossed the seas to found a new empire. 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


229 


Continuing their walk and their talk, — first 
visiting the studio of Rembrandt, — the three 
set out to cross the Dam or great public square 
to visit the Royal Palace, which had just been 
completed ; when they found their way made 
difficult by a dense crowd of Jews gathered to 
hear Zeighler, the fanatic of Hamburg, who 
predicted an early coming of the Messiah. The 
Jewish population of the city, which had greatly 
increased by the profits of a monopoly of the 
diamond-polishing business, had been persuaded 
to send Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel to England 
to examine the pedigree of Cromwell, who was 
then the rising hope of England. They were 
the more ready to do this by the interest they 
took in sacred studies, since the wealthy Jews 
of Amsterdam — to whom, later, William of 
Orange owed it that he became King of Eng- 
land — had established an academy for the pur- 
suit of Hebrew and Spanish literature. 

Bernard Anselm, with a good memory for 
faces, recognized in the crowd by which he was 
elbowed some with whom he had been formerly 
acquainted. 

Here it was, upon the Dam,’’ remarked Gro- 
tius, “ that the Protestant martyrdoms took 


230 


AGATHA, 


place under Catholic persecution ; and down 
where the boats lie, the persecutors themselves 
embarked when they were sent into exile by 
the rising power of the Protestants.” 

They were standing upon the very spot where, 
years before, Ainsworth had picked up the 
diamond when walking with Bernard, which led 
to the acquaintance with Aaron Levi, and Leah 
his wife. Looking in the direction of the boats, 
Bernard saw Leah advancing, supported by a 
young scholar of the Academy, who looked like 
Rachel. 

‘‘Uncircumcised dog!” exclaimed Leah upon 
catching sight of Bernard, “ now I liave thee. 
Art thou he against whom I have not failed 
to lift up my voice thrice daily, crying to a 
merciful God to curse thee ? 0 thou who didst 

embitter my life with gall, I have thee. May 
darkness dwell with thee, and the worm consume 
thee. God break thy teeth, thou wicked man ; 
and drive thee out of all human habitations. 
Be thou extirpated; childless go to thy grave. 
Be thou mad for the sight of thine eyes, which 
thou shalt se.e ; be thou oppressed and crushed 
always. The scourge of God shall not depart 
from thine house.” 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


231 


Bernard stood with folded arms, quietly. If 
his face was not pale but like that of a corpse, 
it might have been because he saw in vision 
Rachel, as she looked in the days of her 
innocency. 

Grotius, thunder-struck, asked Antony An- 
selm where he could find the watch ; the woman 
must be a lunatic. 

Bernard, hearing the question of calling an 
officer, turned to his brother and his comrade: 
‘‘ What she says is true. Her daughter was 
betrayed by me in my boyhood, and was the 
mother of my child, and I wickedly abandoned 
her. She does well to be angry. Nay, if her 
heart be not broken, as it has reason to be, per- 
haps her brain is disturbed. Sorrows less than 
hers have wrecked many a mind. It is perfectly 
just for her to accuse me in this public place. I 
pray you, harm her not.” 

“ I congratulate you, Bern., if that ’s the case, 
that you get off so easily,” said Antony Anselm. 
“ You are lucky to be out of it. Ah, ha, you 
did right not to have this woman for your moth- 
er-in-law. Would n’t she, Grotius, have been 
a lovely female for him to have had under his 
roof?” 


232 


AGATHA. 


“ If this is a domestic quarrel, I will be ex- 
cused,’’ returned the ambassador. Which way 
did you bid me go to find the watch ? ” 

Without intermission, the berating of the 
maddened woman went on ; raving in more ter- 
rible denunciations, upon observing that they 
provoked no reply. 

Zeighler had left his exhortations, — seeing 
that his hearers had left him, and were all 
crowding around Bernard with his brother, and 
Leah with her son. 

Hugo Grotius did well to seek for the officers ; 
they might be needed. 

While the wretched woman went on, — as if 
with the maul, the sword, and the sharp arrow 
of the Hebrew proverb, — Bernard still stood 
quietly with folded arms. Looking about upon 
the crowd, he saw Agatha and an old school- 
mate, Mrs. Van Lennep, trying to make their 
way through the surging mass to that open 
space which the crowd had opened for this as- 
sault and battery by an angry woman’s tongue. 
He noticed finally that Agatha stood still, evi- 
dently having secured elbow-room, as she was 
well able to do in an emergency. 

It must now at least, thought Bernard — 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


233 


coolly, as if sea-bathing after his wont, even in 
winter — be obvious to Agatha what kind of a 
relative he would have had in Leah. He had 
been careful never to intimate that Leah was an 
undesirable acquisition in a domestic point of 
view; he would not do that, lest it seem like 
self-defence for his wrong act. At the same 
time, it came to him now, as it had not be- 
fore for years, that the real reason at bottom 
why he forsook Rachel was the wholesome fear 
he entertained of this woman. The kind of train- 
ing she had given Rachel, and the influence Leah 
would continue to exert upon her daughter, had 
made him despair of any possible good coming 
out of his fulfilling his engagement. With such 
a woman to egg on Rachel, he would rather 
have taken his chances for eternal life with Beel- 
zebub’s oldest daughter. 

If these thoughts were not consistent with 
what he had expressed at other times, they were 
at least now uppermost in his mind. And he 
was glad rather than sorry that Agatha had a 
chance to hear the twang of Leah’s tongue, — 
as he had heard it upon occasion years before, 
— and judge for herself whether he did wisely 
to be rid of the ill-tempered, violent woman, and 


234 


AGATHA. 


the daughter she had trained. If he saw aright, 
great tears were standing in the eyes of Aga- 
tha ; but he could not say how far in sympathy 
for him or possible sympathy for the sorrows of 
Leah, — who, with all her virulence, had enough 
ground for wrath to madden even a saint against 
the destroyer of her domestic peace. 

Bernarti tried to imagine what martyrs were 
in the habit of thinking about in the flames, 
while the terrible creature went on with her 
wild curses. Just what she said, he did not 
notice, or care. 

Suddenly Leah ceased. Then she turned and 
addressed the Oriental mob chafing around 
her : — 

‘‘ Hear, 0 Israel. Witness ye that my shame, 
which has become a proverb among you, — 
‘ shamed as the mother of Rachel,’ — witness ye 
that my shame came upon me as a just judgment 
of God upon that man who was given unto me 
in marriage, in that he forsook the faith of his 
fathers and became even for a few mouths a Chris- 
tian. It was when he was no better than a Chris- 
tian dog that this shame fell upon the mother of 
Rachel. I thank the God of Abraham that this 
son of Abraham died penitent; and that he 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


235 


died propagating a curse upon Christian idol- 
aters who worship the Carpenter’s Son, by 
devoting poor lost Rachel, my Rachel, to a life- 
long mission of revenge. Thank God for that ! ” 

Then the wretched mother shrieked wildly, as 
if truly mad. A physician might, perhaps, have 
detected a touch of mania in the sound. 

Tlie mob took it up. “ This is he who robbed 
the house of Levi of his treasure, his Rachel.” 
And their moutlis were filled with cursing and 
bitterness; and tlie poison of asps was under 
their tongues. With their fierce cries, threats 
were intermingled. 

In a moment’s lull after the first outburst of 
passion, •— Bernard standing motionless, with 
folded arms and placid countenance, — Leah 
beckoned for silence. 

“ My son, curse thou him. Thine oath to thy 
dead father binds thee to curse the betrayer of 
thy sister thrice daily. Thou hast sworn by no 
created thing, which shall pass away, but by the 
name of Him who endureth forever. Rise up, 
and curse this fiendish defiler of a Hebrew 
home.” 

Slowly approaching, he who was afterwards 
known as the Rabbi Manasseh ben Levi loudly 


236 


AGATHA. 


wliispered in the ear of Bernard the most dread- 
ful and startling curses, — echoes from the 
world of woe, the voices of evil spirits, the re- 
verberations of divine justice, which might well 
ring in one’s ears day and night, and haunt the 
mind for years, if once heard. The brother 
prayed that the destroyer of his sister’s peace 
might never enter into life, that his sins might 
hang over him unforgiven, that he might dwell 
in the outer darkness, in the company of the lost 
forever. 

Agatha had now made her way to the front, 
and taken her stand by the side of her husband. 
Her blood, far from being curdled by the hoarse 
whispering of the young Hebrew, still had its 
usual heat, — not less nor more. Seizing the 
arm of the Jew, she bade him desist, and allow 
free passage through the public square. 

Bernard raised his hands, saying, ‘‘ Men of 
Israel — ” But his voice was drowned in the 
sharp outcries of the mob. 

At this point Antony Anselm, who was per- 
sonally known to some of the principal men 
among the Jews as one to whom they were 
largely indebted for their admission to Holland, 
now addressed the crowd at 'some length, pend- 


CROSSING THE DAM, 


237 


ing the arrival of a force which would quickly 
disperse the gathering. They heard him pa- 
tiently. It was a plea for fair dealing, a full 
hearing for Bernard, — a stranger in the city of 
his nativity, — before they should condemn him, 
even with their tongues. 

Hugo Grotius — having now returned with no 
small force of officers, who penetrated the mob 
here and there in a quiet way, exciting no atten- 
tion — now added a few words to what the ad- 
vocate had said : “ Hebrews ! Men of Holland ! 
I long stood in danger of my own life in this land, 
by unfair trial, and the spirit of persecution. 
Now we seek to establish freedom to think, free- 
dom to write, freedom to speak. You have your 
freedom; give to Bernard Anselm his freedom, — 
whom I know of old time as a just man, even if 
found in a single fault. Hear what he has to 
say before you join the outcry against him.’’ 

Merchants and artisans of Amsterdam,” 
began Bernard ; ‘‘ ye who have already made 
honorable contribution to the prosperity of this 
goodly mart, and who will contribute to the 
strength of this government and deal fairly by 
all, now hear me. 

‘‘ In this city I have sinned. Here I confess. 


238 


A GA THA. 


The mother of Rachel will cry out against me in 
the Great Day of the Lord. Let her therefore 
speak now, while I, too, may cry the mercy of 
my final Judge. Who shall stand when He 
appeareth ? Who can abide the fierceness of 
His anger, when His fury is poured out like 
fire ? I do well to quake, and listen now for the 
thunders of that day when the Supreme Judge 
will call me into account. During many years 
I have daily unlocked the secret chambers of my 
heart, and gazed upon the scenes of my early 
life, so vividly depicted there. And daily I have 
set up a court within my own soul, acquitting or 
condemning my acts, so that in the final judg- 
ment I shall plead guilty of all things wherein 
I am guilty. And that process need not be long 
which relates to the house of Levi against which 
I have sinned. That which is covered may now 
be revealed, and that which is hidden made 
known ; and the words spoken in darkness be 
heard in the light. I confess, before you all, the 
sins I have committed. Ye are my witnesses. 
Mine iniquity I do not hide. Before God I lie not. 

“ In regard to those who curse, let my soul be 
silent ; yea, let my soul be like the dust toward 
all. I am in the wrong, 0 citizens of Holland. 


CROSSING THE DAM. 


239 


Whoever of you is conscious of no wrong to con- 
fess in the sight of Heaven, will join this sad 
and heart-broken mother in accusing me. If 
you also stand in need of mercy at the bar of 
God, we will await the issues of that judgment 
which is now set apart for us. 

“Although Leah should clothe herself with 
cursing like a raiment, let her speak. It may 
make lighter the burden of curses with which 
her soul is heavy laden. 

“ I ask, Who is he that condemneth V’ 

The people were silent. The son of Leah 
took his mother’s arm to lead her away. But 
as a cloud, long muttering with thunder and 
belching fire, breaks down at last in a torrent 
of rain, the unhappy woman burst into a flood 
of tears : “ Bernard, 0 Bernard, in memory of 
your childhood years, when you first entered my 
happy home, do not forget to be kind toward 
my poor Rachel, at this hour heart-broken and 
desolate in a far-off land. Give her a home, 
restore her to your love, make her wanderings 
to cease by fulfilling toward her the pledge you 
made in those years of unsuspecting youth and 
confiding love.” 


XXIII. 


AT THE HEAD. 

FTEK, completing the Anselm estate busi- 



ness with his brother, and making certain 
investments in London, and there trading some- 
what for the Mayhew interest, Mr. Anselm and 
his wife returned, via Lisbon, to America, in the 
ship “ White Angel,” — locating at Marblehead. 
The little village was, in popular speech, just los- 
ing its original designation. Marble Harbor, and 
taking on that name which will ever be so dear 
to the natives, — The Head. And there they 
abode. It was within the jurisdiction of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. 

Agatha’s debate with 'Bernard upon the pros 
and cons of living in London, left a definite 
impression upon her mind that she should some- 
time return thither. The long sea-voyaging, the 
change of scene, the excitements of new business, 
the formation of hosts of friends, led Bernard 
and Agatha finally almost to forget the Jewish 


AT THE HEAD. 


241 


Shadow ; Mr. Anselm, if continuing to pray for 
her, performed that duty in a more perfunctory 
manner than if she had been at his elbow with 
her vials of wrath. 

The acquaintance which Mr. Anselm had 
formed some years before with Governor Endi- 
cott, when he had come up from Plymouth with 
Edward Winslow and Doctor Fuller, upon re- 
quest, to advise in settling the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony at Salem, was now of avail in a 
business way. With the co-operation of gentle- 
men at Salem a ship was built, the “ Desire,” — it 
being the third launch in the Colony ; the timber 
was cut within a mile of the Head. Mr. Anselm 
laded her with fish for the Lisbon market ; but 
after he left Marblehead, she was in the West 
India trade, and brought the first cargo of negro 
slaves to New England. The Portuguese fish ex- 
port did not prove large ; keeping as it did only 
six vessels a-fishing. The Anselm ships, how- 
ever, were kept busy in carrying beaver and other 
furs, and' clapboards, to England and France ; 
bringing back domestic supplies. One pinnace, 
laden for France, was unfortunately lost, with 
her cargo, — as if disaster had not ceased to 
follow him. 


Iff 


242 


AGATHA. 


Agatha and Bernard were, however, singularly 
liappy in their home at the rocky Head. The 
country was yet raw, the land untilled, the cities 
not builded, tlie natives of the country helpless 
and idle ; and the unifying of the settlers, to live 
as one at heart, leaguing to bear together the 
brunt of preparing a place for those who should 
come after them, — was an attractive work. 

“ Society,” said Agatha, “ rectifies the mind. 
An active career, and varied employment among 
white people, is better for us than farming at 
Nauset, or rambling at Nantucket.” 

“ I am quite of your mind,” returned Bernard. 
“ Goodness is active, — good toward others, not 
a mere passive state. We can never think our 
way out of uncomfortable mental states ; but we 
can work our way out.” 

‘‘ I believe that we can, if we work trustingly,” 
added Agatha. “ I know many lowly and silent 
souls who need to go to work, rather than spend 
their time in the morbid examination of their 
own hearts.” 

“ ‘ Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, ’ ” 
responded Bernard, ‘‘ is a prayei' often answered 
by inspiring the devotee to teach transgressors 
the Divine ways. If we but deal bread to the 


AT THE HEAD. 


243 


poor and cover the naked, the light of God 
breaks forth as the morning.” 

Too long had the fishermen at the Head been 
remiss in forming a church. This was the more 
regretted by some since it subjected them to 
being governed in civil affairs by Salem, — the 
Bay allowing none to be listed as freemen unless 
church-members. One very gracious town-meet- 
ing at Salem did, to be sure, appoint a Marble- 
header as constable, although he was not pious. 
The fishermen swore roundly that they would 
join the church themselves, rather than be gov- 
erned by Salem. Mr. Anselm, therefore, found 
himself the most popular man in town, when he 
offered to pay the principal part of the expense 
of erecting a meeting-house for William Walton ; 
who, even if not ordained, had been preaching off 
and on. They raised the frame upon the most 
rocky hill they could find ; and then excavated 
crannies as best they could, near it, for burial 
use. The building was much like a barn, — be- 
fitting well the cliaracter, as Mr. Walton said, of 
the odd lot of sheep and goats gathered there on 
Sunday. 

Bernard and Agatha went one day to Bone 
Fudging to visit Abraham Robinson, who had 


244 


AGATHA. 


located on Cape Anne. This was an excursion 
by water. The country-trips back from the 
Head were very beautiful ; there being many 
areas of open land amid the forest, and flat 
plains not a few which were easily made ready 
for cultivation. And the woods, save in swampy 
or very rocky districts, were kept clear of under- 
brush by annual Indian fires. It was easy riding 
almost anywhere back from the sea. The Na- 
hant peninsula, then well wooded with oak, pine, 
and cedar, was visited, — sometimes in a dug-out, 
at others overland. 

Mr. Anselm’s ambition to be useful found an 
object worthy of him in the college whicli the 
Bay people wished to establish ; and it was 
through him that the Bev. Hugh Peters became 
interested in locating it near the Humphrey farm 
just out of Marblehead toward Swampscott. The 
General Court appropriated four hundred pounds 
for the building ; and Mr. Humphrey was asso- 
ciated with Peters to superintend the erection 
of the building. To its support Mr. Anselm 
made large pledges, to be paid when the college 
should be opened for students. It was upon his 
way home from the Humphrey farm to meet 
the committee of the General Court, to execute 


AT THE HEAD, 


245 


the papers setting forth his agreements relating 
to the endowment, that he encountered Rachel. 
It was well-nigh ludicrous, ill-according with 
what he might have wished. 

Bernard, in his happy mental frame after the 
meeting at Humphrey’s, went singing along 
the way, or rather, humming tunes to himself. 
When opposite his fish-yard, looking up, he saw 
Barnabas Laythrope’s hogs among the flakes, 
making havoc with the fish. Springing from 
his horse, he made short work with the brutes. 
When they were squealing loudest in their ef- 
forts to get through a fence, Bernard saw 
Rachel. The antique antipathy of her race to 
pork was uppermost in her mind. 

“ Son of the house of Anselm ! Have you 
become a swineherd ? What’s the price of 
bristles ? ” 

Without pausing for a reply, the Jewess 
stalked down the harbor side with the air of 
a prophetess. She was guised as an Indian 
woman, Quinemiquet. 

Bernard hummed a tune pensive as that of 
the exiles under Babylonian willows. He had 
for some time entertained a morbid fear that, in 
his new surroundings in the Bay Colony, his 


246 


AGATHA. 


true character would not be understood. That 
fear was now removed. 

Moll Pitcher’s great grandfather Dimond had 
a sharp eye to business when he bargained with 
the wizard Rachel for some part of her knowl- 
edge of occult arts. His son John, and grand- 
daughter Mary who married Robert Pitcher, and 
Mary of the next generation, — all profited by 
his small investment of tuition-fees to the Jew- 
ess ; the knowledge inuring to the benefit of his 
family during almost two hundred years. 

Dimond was a little shrivelled-up man, often 
going through the streets gibbering and squeak- 
ing to himself. His face was narrow below and 
broad above ; his head bald, — save as long thin 
iron-gray hair grew under the edge of his mon- 
moutli cap. His hands were long, dry, and 
bony ; the first thumb-joint of unusual length, 
— and the nails short. It was commonly said 
that his index-finger burned like hot iron ; or 
emitted baleful lights upon occasion, — particu- 
larly on a Thursday. He eked out his living in 
such way that when in a subsequent generation 
witches were hung, it was said to be high time, 
that such doings as the Dimonds were up to had 
been going on long enough. 


AT THE HEAD. 


247 


It is easy to suppose that, under the words 
and rites of incantation which he learned from 
the Jewess, his imagination was excited ; and 
that he really believed he saw an appearance of 
images, which represented planetary powers. 
Rachel had not been long in town before Di- 
niond was heard by Goody Cettle to say, — 

“ Some cuss unbeknownst to me is fillin’ all 
the air, pintin’ out Mr. Onselm. I feels cusses 
tinglin’ my narves whensomever I sees ’im. 
There ’s some wrong some’er’s.” 

There had been a long drought. The devout 
and sensible Walton gathered the neighbors to 
pray for rain. Not unlikely, rain was near at 
hand ; as possibly might have been observed by 
Rachel, in the movement of plants sensitive to 
gathering moisture. Nothing was more proba- 
ble than that the drought would break up in 
a great discharge- of electricity, whenever the 
windows of heaven should once open. 

Upon the morning of the fast for rain, Rachel 
prepared to observe the day after the manner of 
ancient sages. From the rising of the sun until 
the evening, she was in a state of watchfulness, 
endeavoring to prepare herself for the hour when 
the moon in her gradations should enter the 


1 


248 


AGATHA. 


head of the Bull. The wise woman searched 
the heights of Marblehead, to find an ash and a 
poplar in close contact with an oak ; which she 
happily discovered upon the rocky hill, among 
the graves, near Mr. Walton’s meeting-house; a 
locality sufficiently isolated, and overlooking the 
harbor and hamlet. 

Sometime since, she had instructed Dimond in 
the due preparation of parchment. Upon the 
vigil of Saint J olin the Baptist, when the sun was 
at his greatest elevation above the earth, a white 
lamb of six weeks had been washed seven times 
in a clear flowing stream, then slain with a new 
knife ; and with sundry precautions against the 
defilement of the body and by tools never put 
to profane use the lamb-skin had been made 
ready, and divided into pieces three inches 
square. Each piece of the parchment was then 
wrapped in white linen and placed in the box, 
which contained the instruments suited for the 
various needful ceremonials of the art. Rachel 
upon the fast-day prepared a fresh raven’s-quill, 
and then with new ink drew upon a square of 
parchment — with great exactness — the Grand 
Pentacle of Solomon ; and upon other squares 
the pentacles appropriate to that day of the 


AT THE HEAD. 


249 


week, and to her purpose. These peiitacles 
were carefully wrapped in new white linen, and 
placed in the box ready for occasion. 

The perfume agreeable to the planetary power 
ruling that day, was prepared, — seed of the ash- 
tree, wood of olive, storax, and Benjamin, pow- 
der of blue, and the end of a quill, — pulverized 
and so delicately proportioned as to be of pleas- 
ant odor, then made into minute pellets ; which 
were placed in the box for ceremonial use. 

At the close of the day, as the hour ap- 
proached, Kachel drew near to the predeter- 
mined spot in a long white robe and cap, with 
covering for her hands and feet of white linen ; 
and she was adorned with jewels of beryl, 
sapphire, and green emerald. The light table 
which Dimond had prepared under the oak so 
stood that it was touched by long branches of 
the ash and of the poplar. Over it was spread 
a white linen cloth. The instruments to be used 
were taken from the box and placed upon the 
table ; and Rachel, facing the east, sprinkled 
them with holy water. New charcoal was then 
placed in a new chafing-dish of earth, which was 
fired by flint and steel, when the gradations of 
the moon indicated that the appropriate hour 


250 


AGATHA. 


had arrived. And a pinch of perfume was 
dropped upon the burning coals. 

“ 0 kind and beneficent Sachiel, who art 
loaded with honors, and disposeth with a liberal 
hand, reject not the prayers I make unto thee 
through the intercession of thy well-beloved 
Maguth, Gutrix, Gachiel, Soheith ; and give 
unto my operations success, that to thee may 
be the glory of it.” 

The pentacles, powerful to ward off terrors 
and the most evil of the genii, were upon the 
table. And perfume was added to the burning 
coals. 

I conjure you, all heavenly genii, that you 
please those who rely on your wonderful power. 
O Rael, Miel, Neptrapha, Calvex, be ready here 
to put to flight all those spirits that seek to 
impede my operations.” 

With a hazel stick, and a small piece of twine 
to insure accuracy, the grand figures necessary 
were drawn upon the sandy surface made ready 
for receiving them. 

‘‘ Come speedily, ye blessed spirits who pre- 
side over the operations of this day. Come, 
incomparable Zebul, and all your legions. Run 
to my assistance; and be propitious to my 


AT THE HEAD, 


251 


undertakings. Be kind, and refuse me not 
your powerful aid.” 

The firm and steadfast enchantress feared no 
evil from the apparition, although appearing in 
magnificent equipment, like a crowned king. 
There was a crack of thunder and a bolt of 
fire. 

It is a strange story, and cannot be bet- 
ter told than in the words of the original 
record : — 

‘‘ Some correspondency she has with the devil 
out of all doubt. When she hath begun her 
incantations, according to her usual custom, 
before the same has been ended, a thick cloud 
has darkened the air ; and, on a sudden, a 
thunder-clap hath been lieard that has amazed 
the hearers, which doubtless was done by the 
agility of Satan her consort. 

“ As I was going homeward, the clouds com- 
ing up exceeding black and terrible, and flying 
low and thick so that the heavens were much 
darkened, being about half a mile from home, 
I met Mr. Anselm, near the Craddock house, 
which he occupied by his fishermen and his 
goods, who advised me to go in with him to 
the house lest I should be overtaken in the 


252 


AGATHA. 


storm ere I sliould get home. The clouds were 
so disposed that it came directly over our town, 
and it was extremely dark. I accordingly went 
in with him; and the said Anselm sat down on 
a stool with his face toward the inner door, and 
his back to the hearth, and his side close to 
the jamb of the chimney. I sat down with my 
face directly toward him, about six foot from 
him. Then in a moment came down a great 
ball of fire, with a strong and great clap of 
thunder, and a crash as if all the timbers in 
the house were splintered. 

“ The ball of fire fell just before where the 
said Anselm sat. My eye, then happening to be 
on him saw him once start on the stool he sat 
on, and fell from thence on the hearth without 
any motion of life. The house was full of 
smoke, and there was a terrible smell of brim- 
stone ; and fire lay scattered all about the floor, 
— whether the fire that was upon the hearth, by 
the violence of the stroke tossed about the 
house, or fire from heaven I knew not. I 
thought at first that all the people had been 
mortally struck by God’s arrows, but myself ; 
till it pleased God to revive them. The said 
Anselm, even, came off scathless, and all were 


AT THE HEAD. 


253 


wonderfully preserved ; but a dog was slain 
under a table. The clap of thunder rent the 
chimney, and split the door in many places. 
Many bricks were beaten down, the principal 
rafters split, the battens and lining next the 
chimney in the chamber broken, one of the 
main posts of the house into which the girt 
was framed torn into shivers, and a great part 
of it carried several rods from the house. Out 
of the girt aforesaid, being a dry oak, was 
pieces wonderfully taken. The thatch was set 
on fire, but a rain of liberalities was pouring 
down, and put it out. The sky cannonaded 
great guns ; and a whirlwind tore up trees by 
the roots. 

“ By such a dismal stroke was the pinching 
of the drought brought to an end, — whether it be 
said that the Lord answered them that fasted 
and prayed by terrible things in righteousness, 
or whether the Indian wizard did it by corres- 
pondency with the devil, I cannot answer.” 

The town was full of sympathy for Mr. Anselm 
in the loss he sustained, and congratulations upon 
his providential escape ; but inside of a month 
he was struck by a slander-storm, — which to 
his proper personality, his reputation, was more 


254 


AGATHA. 


deadly than the lightning-stroke. Sister Hanna 
Boatfish said that Mr. Anselm was no better 
than “ the men of Ninevy and Sodom and them 
other Bible towns.” Roger Buckline, to be sure, 
thought it a pity that the church should lose the 
merchant’s money, since his tax was thrice that 
of any one else in town. Even Mr. Thomas 
Sams, Mr. John Peach, and Mr. George Cling, 
all put together had smaller resources than Mr. 
Anselm. But when Buckline expressed his fear 
that their political rights would suffer at the 
hands of Salem, if the Anselm aid should be 
withdrawn from their church. Brother Eliakim 
Fair weather’s statement, that Hugh Peters’ col- 
lege was to have all that money any way, settled 
the question. Mr. Justice Pinson procured an or- 
der of court that Mr. Anselm “ should be sent for, 
that he might understand the desire of the coun- 
try for his removal from Marble Harbor.” It 
urged that Governor Bradford, Governor Wins- 
low, and Governor Prence all talked hard against 
Mr. Anselm in a meeting held at Nantucket or 
somewhere dowji that way ; and that the Bay 
Colony ought to cast him overboard like Jonah. 

“ I pray you to pay me my money, that I were 
gone,” asked Dick Abell on meeting Mr. Anselm 


AT THE HEAD. 


255 


next morning, And the other boat hands de- 
sired him to bestow their money ; who were all 
well contented for their pains in his service. 

This was to Mr. Anselm the first intimation 
that the slander-storm had broken over his head. 
After lie had full and official knowledge thereof, 
he conveyed his houses and buildings and fish- 
ing-stages at the Head to Moses Maverick. 
He then did hire two porters to fetch away 
their personal wares, and he with his consort 
departed. 

He was blackguarded by the saints, and sneered 
at by the sinners. The grinning and scowling 
populace, clattering about in wooden shoes, was 
rude and even insolent, when the exiles rode 
away. There was a tinge of grim humor in it 
all, with which the tourists could not quarrel. 
The air was full of soft snickers and gentle 
giggling along the front of the crowd, where 
the boys and girls stood ; and keen glances re- 
sponded to the good-by given them by Agatha. 

“ Their rooms are better than their companies,” 
remarked Aunt Hanna Boatfish, which awakened 
a light echoing hue and cry ; then the pursuit of 
the enemy of public morality was dropped. 

A great southeast storm had been brewing; 


256 


AGATHA. 


and it overtook Bernard and Agatha just before 
they reached Salem. It grew not by degrees, 
but came with great violence in the beginning, 
to the great amazement of the travellers, and to 
their alarming apprehensions. They were glad 
when they reached the hospitable roof of Gov- 
ernor Endicott. 

This storm appears to have been very exten- 
sive along the whole coast. It was only of five 
or six hours’ duration ; but it was such a mighty 
storm of wind and rain as none living, either 
English or Indians, had seen the like ; being like 
unto those hurricanes or tuffins that writers 
mention to be in the Indies. It threw down the 
corn, flattening it to the ground, — even when it 
was near harvest-time. It blew down many 
liundred thousands of trees, turning up the 
stronger by the roots, and breaking tjie high 
pine-trees and such like in the midst ; and the 
tall young oaks and walnut-trees, of good big- 
ness, were wound as withes by it, very strange 
and fearful to behold. It blew down sundry 
houses, and uncovered divers others. The sea 
arose to twenty foot right up and down. Indians 
had to climb trees for their safety, to get out of 
the height of the tide. Divers vessels were lost 


AT THE HEAD. 


257 


at sea in it, and many were in extreme danger. 
The most grievous of all was the loss of Mr. 
Anselm’s bark sent to Newbury to bring Kev. 
John Avery and family to Marblehead, and his 
cousin Mr. Anthony Thacher. Thacher and 
wife only were saved, cast ashore by the waves. 
The moon suffered a great eclipse two nights 
after it. 

One effect of this storm was to shake faith in 
the wizard. There could now be no longer ques- 
tion. It was the Lord out of heaven who had 
rebuked Mr. Anselm’s sins ; which made it emi- 
nently proper for his people to do the same. 
And it passed into a common saying at the Head, 
that “ A big tax paid by some great sinner to the 
Church is not so good as a tithe of morality, for 
keeping up religion.” 


17 


xxiy. 


THE HUDSOX. 

ETER spending a day or two at the Endi- 



^ cott house, and paying a visit to Simon 
Bradstreet’s family, Bernard Anselm and his 
wife set out for New London, where Jonathan 
Brewster was then living. They went through 
the wilderness. 

In so entering tjie forest Mr. Anselm was lost 
to the sight of New England historians, — the 
writers living nearest his day having believed 
that he went to England after leaving Marble- 
head. The later portion of his career has been 
brought to light within a comparatively recent 
period. 

It is probable that Bernard Anselm and Aga- 
tha gained as much from their Marblehead life 
as any two ever living there, even for a short 
time. From the Head they bore away a delight- 
ful fund of reminiscence ; and when he came 
near to the end of his days Bernard could bring 


THE HUDSON, 


259 


a smile in the place of tears by recalling to Aga- 
tha some odd incident relating to their quaint 
experiences at Marble Harbor. So far from 
thinking that any wrong had been done them, 
they pardoned everything to the spirit of free- 
dom, and looked for no perfect adjustment, or the 
avoiding of collisions, among those who above all 
loved their liberty. Many of the people had but 
recently come out from the Channel Islands ; 
and none of them knew very well what to do 
with the civil rights and powers so easily their 
own in the new country. 

There is sometliing almost comical in our 
migrations,” said Bernard, as they were leaving 
the Indian village Magunkaquog upon its sightly 
hill, moving westward. “ It is getting to be a 
steady thing. We can depend upon it. At any 
time, other business being a little dull, we can 
arise and move. I had noticed that the fish did 
not bite so well, before we thought of leaving 
the Head.” 

‘‘ There ’s less dust at Marble Harbor than at 
any other place I know of,” returned Agatha. “ I 
looked round for some to shake olf in testimony 
against them ; but I could find nothing to shake 
but boulders and ledges, beach-grass and sand, a 


260 


AGATHA, 


few dried fish, certain well oiled apostles and 
their excellent wives. So that I have only gar- 
nered pleasant memories, and am content.’^ 

‘•I remember,^’ continued Bernard, “what a 
tussle I had with myself many years since, in 
kneading into my soul the saying of the Talmud, 
— ‘ Thou shalt not resent ; a man is entirely to 
dismiss every feeling of ill-will from his heart, 
and his mind must be pure.’ ” 

“ I fear that it will much prejudice our estate 
to move so often.” 

“The outward means of living will not soon 
be wanting; so that we shall suffer not, unless, 
by scanty dole of heavenly bread. Even the 
Quakers, when bundled about, make sure to 
get that.” 

All day, till they reached Hassanemesitt, they 
talked upon the relation of secular affairs to 
religious temperament. It was still agreed that 
an active career was better, if one stood in 
temptation to be morbid. 

If, far inland, the wayfarers missed the sound 
of the sea, they listened to the silence of the 
woodlands, — a silence forcing itself upon their 
attention, by the absence of accustomed sounds 
beating upon their ears. And they heard the 


THE HUDSON. 


261 


brook-voices, and saw the sources of rivers, and 
the lakes among the hills. The white-pines 
back from the seaboard, and the variety of 
timber, made them glad. 

“ In respect to business affairs,” said Bernard, 

I am well fitted to endure reverses. My mind 
is not ruffled save by my voluntary action in 
doing what I know to be wrong.” 

‘‘I should, indeed, on my part,” replied his 
wife, “ be much disturbed by many events, could 
I never ascend and live upon a higher plane. 
Just in proportion as sorrows are heaped upon 
me, my joy is increased ; so that I am happiest 
when I should be saddest.” 

‘‘ Your happy art, Agatha, of being exceeding 
joyful in all tribulation, is apostolic. And I, too, 
am learning in your company to sing, — ‘ Let the 
heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice.’ The 
freshness and beauty of no morning makes me 
so happy as your shining face and habitual 
cheeriness.” 

“ To tell the truth, Bernard, I learn to sing as 
the birds do, by meditating my songs. When it 
is dark, I think upon the mercies which endure 
forever ; and the first thing I know it is daylight, 
the night is past, and I sing.” 


262 


AGATHA. 


‘‘We ought to be as joyous as birds, to be sure; 
and shall be, if we walk in the light.” 

“ It is written that ye shall go out with joy, 
and be led forth with peace.” 

Then upon the happy shores of Quinsiga- 
mond, Bernard and Agatha made the forest 
aisles and arches to echo with the songs of 
their pilgrimage. 

Agatha found her brother at New London, or 
Mohegan as it was then called, living in a house 
at the lower end of the bank south of the present 
Tilley Street. He was however just moving 
across the river to Poquonuck, where Uncas 
had deeded him land, in consideration of his 
establishing a trading-house. The grant is still 
called Brewster’s Neck. He had the monopoly 
of the Indian trade for many years. 

Mr. Anselm conferred very fully with Brewster, 
the junior Winthrop and others, in regard to the 
various locations discovered in New England. 
The most part of the Plymouth people stayed, 
upon advice from Leyden, where Providence had 
landed them ; but there was much to be made, 
they all agreed, by using the wits Providence had 
given them to get up and go elsewhere. New 
London was naturally the seaport of southern 


THE HUDSON. 


263 


New England. Mr. Anselm perhaps might have 
been persuaded to give up his plan to go among 
his own people, the Dutch, at New Amsterdam, 
had it not been for a circumstance which occurred 
some two months after Jonathan Brewster had 
moved into his new house upon the east side. 

Agatha was relieving her sister at the spinning- 
wheel, when some half-dozen Narragansetts came 
in, dangling fresh Mohegan scalps. Agatha, with 
a calmness like that of mechanism, kept on with 
her spinning ; nor did she manifest the slightest 
tremor when one advanced toward her with up- 
lifted tomahawk. She merely kept spinning, as 
if a living spirit was whirling in the wheel and 
concentrating its power at the point of the spin- 
dle. The flax-twining perhaps saved her life. 
The wheel flew faster and faster. Agatha kept 
her eyes steadily upon her work, drawing out 
the thread as if it were a new creation. Every 
Indian’s eye was riveted to the point of the 
spindle. Bernard at that moment appearing, 
they suddenly turned toward him. Mr. Brewster 
was close behind. He was apparently known to 
one of them. And it was explained that they 
rushed into the house in pursuit of a Mohegan 
Warrior, who — as they supposed — had fled 


264 


AGATHA. 


thither for safety. Since the Narragansetts had 
invaded the country of Uncas in force, the apol- 
ogy was accepted. 

When it afterwards came to light, by Narra- 
gansett prisoners, that Quinemiquet had spent the 
autumnal months with Magnus, the Narragansett 
squaw-sachem who married tlie son of Canonicus ; 
and that she had come with the war party into 
the neighborhood of New London, — there was 
a strong presumption that the entrance of the 
warriors into the Brewster house had other de- 
sign than the pursuit of a Mohegan. Mr. Jona- 
than Brewster did not, however, feel quite certain 
that he had made his inquiries intelligible, or 
that the answers were accurate. 

This perhaps presented no valid reason why 
Mr. Anselm should not locate, and engage in 
trade ; but it was the occasion upon which he 
definitely decided to go forward in the spring 
to New Amsterdam. The commercial grounds 
for this determination appeared sound to Agatha, 
although she would have preferred to remain in 
Connecticut. 

They were accompanied a little way upon their 
journey by Winthrop, the Connecticut Governor, 
who went to the boundary line of the New Haven 


THE HUDSON. 


265 


Colony, to marry a couple from Saybrook. There 
had been a great snow-fall north, which prevented 
the magistrate from coming down the river ; and 
there being less snow upon the sea-board, Win- 
throp accommoda.ted the lovers by meeting them 
at the extreme limits of his jurisdiction. It was 
not far from Sunkipaug Pond, by the side of a 
stream called Bride Brook to this day. Agatha’s 
journal gave a pleasing picture of the horseback 
party, — fur-clad, upon the fresh snow, with just 
heat enough from the sun to make the pine 
forest comfortable. Wlien the Governor turned 
back, Bernard and Agatha accompanied Jonathan 
Rudd and his bride to Saybrook, — so continuing 
their journey. 

Agatha, so easily contented, was soon at home 
among the Dutcli, although the new settlement 
had little in it to remind her of Leyden. Con- 
cerning what her husband did at New Amster- 
dam, less is known than of any other period of 
his life. He was in the tobacco-trade, — import- 
ing from Virginia, and shipping to Lisbon, — 
where the manufacture that has since reached 
such proportions was then just established. A 
large brick warehouse, knowui as the Anselm 
Building, was standing, just before the Revolu- 


266 


AGATHA. 


tion, near what is now Fulton Market; it is 
believed to have been his tobacco-house. 

Not long after his arrival in New Amsterdam, 
Mr. Anselm was employed by Governor Stuyve- 
sant in certain negotiations with the New Haven 
Colony ; which opened the way for pleasant ac- 
quaintances, and led ultimately to his removal 
to New Haven. The shipping interests estab- 
lished in the Dutch jurisdiction were carried 
forward for some years, even after Mr. Anselm’s 
death, by wise and faithful partners. During 
his stay at the mouth of the Hudson the ancient 
house of Anselm was worthily represented by 
one who was esteemed the chief merchant, and 
second to the Governor, — of fair and gentle 
behavior, making many friends. Indeed, one 
authority states' that he was chosen mayor when 
the thriving village first called itself a city. 

In going to New Amsterdam, Bernard went 
unwittingly into the only community in Amer- 
ica where Bachel was at home and welcome, 
and not without influence among white people. 
Here were several families of Jews, most repu- 
table citizens. The wily woman had a care 
to maintain her respectability among them ; 
although she lost no caste by seeking to be 


THE HUDSON. 


267 


revenged upon the enemy of her father’s house. 
Here she had a home, so far as to have roof and 
place to bestow her goods. Indeed, she had a 
small interest in the Hebrew traffic ; and some- 
times carried to the New England settlements 
ribbons and trinkets and a variety of small 
wares. She did not appear to the Jews to be 
the recipient of charity or to ask forbearance. 
They thought her tlirifty, if eccentric. It is 
even said that she was the owner of a small 
field and house near the North river, which was 
rented to a respectable Dutch family. The 
woman indeed was looked up to by some, and 
admired for other qualities than her comeliness 
by others. She was cautious to excite no ani- 
mosity on the part of the Dutch. In fact, she 
was a good society woman, living in some style ; 
having not only acquaintances, but those who 
bandied about the word ^Hriend,” as if they 
knew what it meant. So did she satisfy her 
heart’s craving for respectability in some circle ; 
much as the most degraded denizens of great 
cities depend upon being appreciated- by some- 
body, as to such good qualities as they have. 

Bernard and Agatha had not been many 
months in the Dutch city before they learned 


208 


AGATHA. 


of Rachel as coming and going, and her mode 
of life. But the atmosphere of the community 
was very different from that which pervaded the 
Puritan colonies ; and any accusation she might 
prefer against Mr. Anselm, as to by-gone years, 
was not likely to excite reprehension ; but upon 
the other hand would throw suspicion upon 
Rachel, in the only locality in the world where 
she laid claim to respectability. 

It was only just before they moved' to New 
Haven that Bernard and Agatha saw Rachel. 
They were glad to have solved for them the riddle 
of her existence and her reappearances ; and to 
know that she was not absolutely so homeless 
as they had feared, and that she needed not to 
make herself and others wretched. Although 
they believed her to be every whit as bad, if not 
worse than she appeared to be, Bernard had 
more hope in her future, in that she was not 
always in the depths of despair, but maintained 
an interest in some part of life’s ordinary routine. 

“ Despair,” said Bernard, as they were riding- 
one day three or four miles out of town to the 
Bowery^ making the most of the good sleighing, 
“ has no saving, no sanctifying power ; but many 
a poor devil has been made worse for it.” 


TBE HUDSON. 


269 


They were near the river, and saw Rachel 
flying over the ice-bound waters like an appari- 
tion. Bernard proposed that they seek her out 
at her lodgings. 

On my part,” returned Agatha, “ I am of 
the mind of Rachel’s ancestor, of whom she 
boasts so much, — ‘ I will not know a wicked 
person.’ ” 

If was agreed, however, to make the experi- 
ment, which Bernard thought needful, that they 
might judge whether his praying for her did 
the slightest good. Agatha did not, however, 
think that Rachel’s human nature was of such 
sort that she would take advice from Bernard, 
or from herself in her own relation to him. If 
any good was to come to her, it must be by 
some other. It had sometimes come into her 
mind that the Mayhews might have exercised 
a vrholesome influence upon her, if there had 
been opportunity. The New Amsterdam sur- 
roundings Agatha did not believe to promise 
well for any radical reformation in the wicked 
woman, — it being apparent that she bolstered 
up her self-respect in her courses by trying to 
win a reputation for respectability, without really 
changing her life-purposes. 


270 


AGATHA. 


One reason why Agatha was willing to call 
upon her was the hope, even for a moment, to 
see upon Rachel’s face some other expression 
than that she wore upon the terrible night at 
Coskata. Agatha was surprised that she looked 
so young. And it was noticeable that the Dutch 
style of wearing jewelry was put to some purpose 
by the Jewess ; who, if her fingers were hooped 
by rings with many colors, and ears hung with 
pendants, yet wisely ordered her ornaments to 
suit the planetary powers reigning upon a given 
week-day. What hope could there be for such 
a woman? For example, upon the day when 
they saw her, the Jewess wore ornaments of 
beryl, cornelian, and coral, and a sprig of myrtle 
in her hair ; and she was perfumed with musk 
and rose. But Bernard looked away from her,, 
and gazed upon Agatha’s beautiful and spirit- 
ual face, and plain neck-kcrchief ; and he was 
content with the Puritan fashion. In giddy 
humor was Rachel when she received her call- 
ers, — slightly tossing her head when address- 
ing Bernard, and sneering when she spoke to 
Agatha. 

Upon them both Rachel made the impression 
that she had become indurated by settled courses 


THE HUDSON. 


2T1 


of evil ; that any possible reminder of a fine 
sense of delicacy which they had hoped to see 
had been destroyed. It seemed doubtful whether 
there was now a better nature to which to appeal: 
They gained, in seeing her, a new view of the 
possibilities of wickedness into wliich she might 
be led ; and new insight into the possible depths 
of human woe. It was not a question whether 
the fierce, unrelenting spirit of her mother was 
developing to a surprising degree in the daughter ; 
or whether sin, clinging, corrupting, and making 
miserable, was obtaining greater and greater con- 
trol of her entire being. It was simply to be 
decided whether frank, open-hearted kindness 
could excite in Rachel the slightest interest, and 
whether Bernard and Agatha could be of any 
use in leading her to other courses of thought 
and life. 

The interview was cut short by Rachel, who 
showed the utmost contempt by the cast of her 
countenance. 

“ If you have no new proposition to make ; if 
my vow is not cancelled in the only way in which 
it can be lawfully ; if you, Agatha,” she said 
with a grimace of disdain, are not ready to 
relinquish the place you hold wrongfully ; if you, 


272 


AGATHA. 


Bernard, are still unwilling to fulfil your word 
to me, — then I can hold no parley with you. 

‘‘If you come simpering and whining, and 
offering sympathy which you will not make 
good by your acts of righteousness, by the only 
acts which are truly right, then I scorn you ; 
and you only make yourselves ridiculous by 
offering it. 

“ If you come with a sneaking invitation for 
me to abjure my faith in the God of my fathers, 
I will scoff at you, and at what you are pleased 
to call your faith, — a faith that is consistent 
with treachery. 

“Do you dare mention to me the Nazarene 
Carpenter ? My life may, or may not be, mor- 
ally unworthy ; but I have not yet concluded to 
become a renegade to my religion.’^ 


XXV. 


EXTEEIXa THE HAVEX. 

TT is noteworthy that the time when the An, 
selms removed to New Haven is fixed by 
a record designating the seats they were to 
occupy in the Quinnipiac meeting-house. Al- 
though the conduct of certain matters of state 
between the Dutch and the English, and the 
exigencies of the New Amsterdam traffic and 
the opening of the Barbadoes trade, and a con- 
nection with the Dutch settlers at Milford and 
other points east of the Hudson, took Mr. An- 
selm away from home a good deal, yet they had 
more of a home than Agatha had known since 
they were first located at Plymouth. They had, 
however, no sooner built their new house than 
the shadow of death fell upon it ; and Bernard 
Anselm entered the Haven of Rest. The con- 
stitutional disorders which had more or less 
affected his mental frames, and which defied 
treatment, began in less than a year after their 
18 


274 


AGATHA, 


new home was established to threaten the slow 
but sure failure of health ; and resulted in the 
transplanting of life itself in less than a year 
thereafter. So that a certain pathetic interest 
attaches to the very house in which Ag'atha was 
to begin her widowhood, and to that little which 
we know of what occurred in it. 

The house stood upon the east side of Union, 
near Fair Street. It is, in the old record, called 
a grand house with four porches, one of the four 
best houses in town ; and New Haven was better 
built than any other village of early Colonial 
times. Mr. Anselm, it is said, had a barn and 
orchard, and two acres of meadow ; and John 
Bishop was the faithful man of all work. Al- 
though it would be quite possible to tell every- 
thing Agatha had in her house, from the full 
inventories preserved of those early homes, it 
has not seemed important to list the silver 
candlesticks, colanders, ladles, skimmers and 
spoons, wooden ware, latten ware, and china. 

It is, however, of the greatest interest that 
Governor Eaton and John Davenport — who 
were ordained of Nature to become founders of 
States, men able in the management of extended 
affairs — often passed in and out. Whether or 


ENTERING THE HAVEN. 


275 


not Davenport — once vicar of St. Stephen’s, to 
whom the Bay Colony offered his pick out of 
their whole territory, whom Cambridge sought, 
and for whom Newbury offered to vacate its 
lands of freeholders — wore lace of gold or of 
silver in entering the house of Agatha, and 
whether; he left to posterity the measure of his 
knee-buckles, it cannot now be inquired. When 
he preached under the Quinnipiac Oak, upon the 
corner of George and College streets, it was upon 
the temptations of the wilderness. He came to 
New Haven upon serious business. 

There could be no more worthy theme, if one 
were greatly ambitious, than the reproduction of 
the lives of the early settlers of New Haven. 
What was here wrought, before the population 
numbered five hundred souls, in subordinating 
all other things to the spiritual life, and seeking 
to set forth Jehovah as their King, — if pictured 
as it was, — might well draw the attention of 
thoughtful people the world over. 

To the present purpose is what they did to 
promote education ; of this, however, only a 
paragraph is pertinent. It was at the Anselm 
fireside that Davenport unfolded his great plan, 
new to the world, to educate all the people. 


276 


AGATHA. 


Governor Prence in the Old Colony did not carry 
matters so far, or undertake so great a work as 
that which the New Haven men put into practi- 
cal operation. Through Davenport the town 
made a donation of land for a college when the 
freemen were a mere handful ; and through him 
Mr. Anselm, in months of illness, made offer of 
that substantial aid which was not now due 
from him to the Bay college, on account of its 
removal from Marblehead to Cambridge after 
the scandal broke out in regard to the donor. 
The General Court, at Guilford, upon the twent}^- 
eighth of June, made a formal tender of thanks to 
Mr. Anselm, which reached him upon his dying 
bed. 

“ I do not dare to die,” he had said, “ without 
doing something for the youth of the world, 
that the generations coming may walk in the 
light.” 

When it had become evident that Bernard’s 
health was undermined, Agatha proposed his 
returning to his native land. But he said : I 
shall die here. I wish to do something toward 
founding these happy States of the New World ; 
and this will be a good land in which my body 
may rest awaiting the resurrection. We have 


ENTERING THE HAVEN. 277 

no children. It is a happy thought that we may 
make such provision for other people’s children 
in after-ages, here in New Haven, that our lives, 
may not miss their highest destiny.” 

The alternations of hope and of anguish puls- 
ing in the veins of Agatha, were brought to a 
stand by Dr. Chais,^ who told her that Bernard 
was near death’s door. Then, knowing the 
worst, she looked not backward but forward, as 
her husband did ; and so was at peace. 

“It is so delightful to be done with the world,” 
said Bernard, at noontide ; “ but love lives on 
forever.” 

“ Do you want anything ? ” asked Agatha, in 
the stillness of the night. 

“ Yes, I want to go home.” 

“Look up then, and lift up your head; for 
your redemption draweth nigh.” 

When Deacon John Doane, who was one of 
their neighbors, came in, he said, “ Bernard, 
you have everything to live for.” The answer 
was returned, — and these were the last words 
he spoke, — “I have everything to die for.” 

At the coffin-side, upon the day of the funeral, 
stood Rachel, — her hand sparkling with the 

1 A French physician, from the University of Francker. 


278 


AGATHA. 


diamond which Bernard had bestowed upon her 
at betrothal. 

Severe countenances and harsh words greeted 
the woman — who was well known in the town 
— when she went forth from the house of mourn- 
ing. The whole town was soon a-buzz. 

This was in the very midst of the Cheever 
controversy, in which the schoolmaster stood, 
as against the Church, for the right of a sinner 
to repent. They were provoked, and did not 
want her to repent. Not always prudent was' 
Mr. Cheever ; and some things he said about the 
apparition at the funeral — in the excited state 
of the community against himself — greatly 
complicated matters.^ It was commonly said 
that the late Mr. Anselm was the only man who 
ever lived in New Haven, who had seven gov- 
ernors against him ; and that it was not worthy 
in the new college to take his gift, which might 
not be pious money ; and they insolently re- 
fused to take it, sending their boys to Harvard 
till 1700. Davenport made a fierce onslaught 

^ He was publicly censured by the Church without pri- 
vate conference, or hearing what he had to say. The 
trial, which was much ado about nothing, is very curious. 
Coll. Ct. Hist. Soc. i. 22-51. 


ENTERING THE HA VENT, 


279 


upon the worthless men who dug up evil ; and it 
was hereupon that the severe law against lying 
was enacted in the New Haven Colony, 

But Agatha, in the depths of her soul, was no 
more disturbed than the ocean deeps by storms 
which fleck the surface. Whether or not all 
passions were stilled, and she was at one with 
God, it appeared as if it was so, — as if she, too, 
had entered the Haven, and was at rest. 

“What we want,” she wrote to Mrs. Prence, 
“ is not heaven ; we want God. 0 my God, 
whom have I in heaven but Thee ? And there 
is none on the earth that I desire besides Thee. 
It was only yesterday, when I was searching my 
Bible to find reasons for thankfulness therein, 
that I found it written, ‘ Mourn not, nor weep, 
neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is 
your strength.’ And to-day, it is to me as if I 
heard a voice out of heaven saying: ‘The re- 
deemed of the Lord shall return, and come with 
singing, and everlasting joy shall be upon their 
head ; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and 
sorrow and mourning shall flee away. ’ ” 

A minority in every community is relatively 
right-minded. Agatha failed not to put herself 
positively into constant communication with 


280 


AGATHA. 


such, without on her part holding aloof until 
approached. So added she earthly help to the 
heavenly. 

Dusting Bernard’s desk one day, where he had 
so often stood at his daily work, the sight of his 
ledgers led Agatha into a singular casting up of 
.accounts. She fancied her husband — cut off as 
he was in the midst of his years and usefulness 
— standing before his final Judge. And she 
found herself at once in her own mind giving 
great weight to the forgiving spirit which Ber- 
nard exercised toward all who wronged him ; 
but she found nothing which would in the slight- 
est degree offset or balance a wrong once done. 
Wrong could be made right by no amount of 
doing right, the right-doing only answering for 
itself. Reflecting then upon the provision of 
sheer mercy by which God saves men from the 
consequences of sin and from sin itself, she 
could not but think of Rachel. Could God up- 
lift that fallen woman? 

This turn to her thoughts came to Agatha 
more readily since she found, in Bernard’s hand, 
various memoranda, prosaic and poetic, in which 
by strong imagery he set forth the one great 
act of wrong which disturbed his life, and in- 


ENTERING THE HAVEN. 


281 


dicated as clearly his own penitence therefor. 
Were it suitable to refer to these in detail, 
nothing could more affect the heart than this 
recital which came to the wife, the widow, as 
if out of the realms of the dead. 

Agatha recalled then a conversation which 
she had with her husband not long before his 
death, in which he expressed some hope that 
his prayers for the wretched might even yet 
avail. “We are not,” he said, “ to underrate 
the power and love of the Holy One. It dis- 
honors the Spirit of all grace to conclude that 
the future will be no better than the past. 
The resources for the renovation of the world 
are in God, not in ourselves. He is able out 
of the very stones to raise up children unto 
Abraham.” 

In this conversation Bernard had not alluded 
to Rachel by name. But in her hours of 
watching, when he believed her to be sleeping, 
Agatha had overheard him praying that she 
herself might be moved to take some personal 
interest in one to whom he could be of no 
service. 

All these thoughts and memories came force- 
fully to Agatha upon the anniversary of Ber- 


282 


AGATHA, 


nard’s deatli. She went to the grave in the 
evening. By the moonlight, which shone upon 
sea and land, she saw Rachel dancing over 
Bernard’s grave. 

In a woman’s wrath, Agatha was about to 
advance, and take the Jewess by the throat. 
But her feet were stayed by the question ringing 
through her mind, — 

Would not my Master exercise pity ? If 
this poor woman anticipates the joys of the lost, 
in her demoniacal revenge, let me anticipate the 
joys of paradise, and pray for her.” 

Falling upon her knees, Agatha prayed, — 

Father, forgive. Light of the World, enlighten 
Thou her mind.” 

When she arose, Rachel had disappeared. 

It was difficult for Agatha, upon reflection, 
to understand how the wicked one could still 
maintain her self-respect ; perhaps she did not. 
If not, she might be less self-righteous. Possibly 
she might come to feel the need of kindness. 
At some time she might accept it. So reasoned 
Agatha. 

No searching, which she could suitably make, 
revealed to Agatha the whereabouts of the Jew- 
ess. Her Hebrew friends at New Amsterdam 


ENTERING THE HAVEN. 


283 


had cast her out. She was indeed now friend- 
less, outcast ; she had gone on from bad to 
worse, — now if never before as bad in reality 
as ever she had seemed. 

When the next spring season came, Agatha 
went one day to the West Rock, there to watch 
the miracle of the unfolding leaf, and observe 
the new forms of the awakening world. She 
had long felt the need of an employment dif- 
ferent from any that came to her hand. Long 
had she argued with herself, and questioned 
herself in attempting to fit her soul for meeting 
God in peace ; and it seemed to her that she 
was living for herself too much. Often had the 
question come, whether, in the strength of her 
years, she might not become a minister for good 
to those who were strangers to that spiritual 
life which was so much to her. 

If any be overtaken in a fault, ye which are 
spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of 
meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also 
be tempted : ” this precept led Agatha to ask 
what hope she herself might impart to the hope- 
less, and what life to the dead. Again and 
again this thought had been urged upon her, 
when it seemed possible that she might find 


284 


AGATHA. 


E-acliel. Not that it would be meet for her in 
her dignified widowhood, she said to herself, to 
have to do with that wretch who had attempted 
to make the life of Bernard intolerable ; but 
there were others like Rachel, more remote, 
who might be reached. Perhaps it was the 
great sorrow of her own life which now led 
Agatha better to understand the desolation of 
such human souls as were absolutely unbe- 
friended. 

Little sense had Agatha, in her girlhood, of 
the sins and sorrows of the world. It was 
Rachel’s career which had shown her, as if in 
sample, the course of life led by many. The 
sad faces of the fallen women whom she had 
seen in London had haunted her ; so that now, 
upon this Rock in the spring-time, she asked 
herself what opportunities of good might await 
the remainder of her days, if she should go 
thither, to tunnel the underworld of that city. 
Was it not providential that her property was, 
for the most part, beyond the sea, invested in 
wicked London ? It was here upon this Rock, 
that she determined by God’s help to take up 
for the remainder of her life this mission to the 
fallen. 


ENTERING THE HAVEN. 


285 


When her arrangements were completed to 
leave the Haven, she visited the grave of her 
husband, — praying God to keep it ; to cover it 
with a white robe in winter, and with green 
spires and blossoms of beauty in summer; to 
fulfil His purpose to glorify the dust thereof. 
And upon the lieadstone was inscribed, “ He 
that keepeth thee will not slumber.” 

With the onsweeping ages little do the saints 
in heaven feel disturbed in regard to their dust 
upon the earth. It cannot therefore vex the 
spirit of Agatha that Bernard’s earlier wish than 
hers has now been fulfilled in respect to his 
grave. 

“ My body is fit only to be cast out, and trod- 
den under the feet of men,” was the memo- 
randum Bernard once made, when strongly 
expressing the sense of his own sinfulness. 

The old New Haven cemetery, used from 1638 
until sometime less than a century since, has 
been now for a long time levelled. And those 
who worship at the Centre Church tread upon 
ground hallowed by the dust of Bernard Anselm 
and the tears of Agatha. 


XXYI. 


AGATHA. 

TI) OSTON wanted a young minister, and called 
John Davenport of New Haven when he 
was three score and ten ; and he went to become 
their pastor, so remaining until he died, — it 
being deemed, even in those early times, safer 
to die in Boston. When he journeyed thither, 
Agatha availed herself of his escort ; thinking 
to embark for London from some port at the 
eastward. Since Davenport had known, from 
the lips of the frank-hearted Bernard, no small 
part of the story of his relation to Rachel, Agatha 
conversed with him freely in regard to her plans. 

Leaving her escort at the house of Rev. 
Thomas Shepard in Cambridge, here Agatha met 
her hostess. Miss Dosafeel Cullimer, of Muddy 
River, who crossed the Charles with her guest to 
inquire for shipping in Boston. If Dosabel was 
still unmarried, it was because no one was fit to 
marry her, unless an archangel. To her lips the 


AGATHA. 


287 


wine of life was never bitter. She was a bene- 
diction to the unfriended all her years. And 
greatly bewailed was she, says the church record, 
at her death. 

It was Miss Cullimer’s former residence in the 
Plymouth Colony that made her acquainted with 
Agatha. Approaching the market-place, they 
saw Rachel standing in her shame upon a public 
platform. If she had little else than her shame 
to cover her, it was a shame to the town ; since 
it was by authority that she stood there. 

Dosabel drew Agatha quickly into the house 
of her sister Hester Wright, who lived across the 
street from the meeting-house, and upon the 
south side of the market, which then occupied 
the site of the Old State House. Here these 
women of kindred spirit might watch the out- 
come, without being observed by the coarse loun- 
gers at the market. Dosabel’s knowledge of the 
scandal following Rachel’s appearance at Ply- 
mouth and Nauset, made it easy to understand 
the interest which Agatha took in what might 
follow that hour of infamy in which the poor 
wretch was to be hooted at by the rabble. 

Burning with indignation at the shame put 
upon her sex by the vulgar-minded officials, 


288 


AGATHA. 


Agatha scanned the face of the Jewess, to see 
if there was one ray of hope gleaming from her 
despairing features. And, since her own course 
toward her might be determined by the charac- 
ter displayed by the fallen woman in this hour 
of public punishment, Agatha seated herself 
where she could through the lattice see and hear 
Rachel and the mob. 

Trooping in upon the mind of Agatha came 
the homely proverbs she had heard in her child- 
hood, and reflections arising from life’s expe- 
rience. “ How could Raclicl,” she asked herself, 
handle pitch for years and escape defilement ? 
How could she for years go so far, without find- 
ing it finally impossible not to go farther ? ” 

This shape, hardly to be called a woman,” 
she said to her companion, has courted admi- 
ration, craved excitement, loved a new sensation, 
for so long a time that she must imagine herself 
now to have found it.” 

The expression of anguish upon Rachel’s face 
at this moment so arrested Agatha’s attention 
that she could not keep her eyes off the vile 
and doleful features. 

“ Oh, Dosabel,” said Agatha, remembering the 
long talks they used to have together when her 


AGATHA. 


289 


home was first at Plymouth, since I saw you, 
in those happy months before Bernard was sick 
and this dark shadow fell upon our house, I 
have seen in your own home-city, London, sights 
of woe which have never ceased to call tears to 
my eyes whenever I have dared to think of 
them/’ 

“ What do you mean, Agatha ? ” asked Dosa- 
bel gazing into the face of her mate, glad to 
gaze anywhither rather than through the dread- 
ful lattice at the vision of a lost woman and the 
demoniacal crowd gathered about her. 

“ I mean that the saddest faces I have ever 
seen have been made sad by sin, — young girls, 
first friendless, with no one to love them, de- 
ceived under the holy name of love, then fallen, 
then outcasts. When they enter upon the more 
guilty part of life, tlieir faces, worn with great 
struggling, arc certainly the saddest in the 
world. Who thinks to pray for those entering 
into temptation ? ” 

I am glad to hear you speak of this,” was 
the answer. Even in so small a community 
as this, we have in the course of a year so great 
a mart that many are the strangers coming and 
going ; and there are of strange women not a 
19 


290 


AGATHA. 


few, as well as evil-minded men. Our author- 
ities are hard pushed to know what to do. 
Then, in our free system of turn and turn about 
as to the administration of government, we get 
in some officials who might more happily be 
left out.” 

Tlie loud jeering of the rabble outside now 
drew DosabeFs attention. A quarter of an hour 
had passed since Rachel had mounted upon the 
pedestal of shame ; and from facing south she 
must now turn to the west, — so showing her 
face to Agatha in profile. This made the 
comely outline of her features more apparent, 
and gave less opportunity to note their expres- 
sion of blank hopelessness. Not until now had 
Agatha noticed that the eye and lip of the Jew- 
ess showed an astonishing transformation of 
character, as though every womanly instinct had 
perished. 

“ It is very evident,” said Agatha, “ that 
Rachel found it impossible to turn aside in the 
narrow limitations of her broad way ; that she 
found all other doors in life grimly closing about 
her; that her very bread, to prolong her sad 
existence, depended at last upon her continuing 
to sin. It seems now as if unending sorrow 


AGATHA. 


291 


had put a mark upon her forehead. How can 
she ever again lift up her eyes in hope ? ” 

It is this question which has much moved 
me,” replied Hosabel. It is only last week 
that two night-walkers were publicly whipped. 
I could not but pity the girls, who wept pit- 
eously over the unknown sorrows of their lives, 
but hardened their hearts under the lash. Our 
town is not only virtuous, but savagely so.” 

The noise and taunts of the surging mob 
could not be kept from the ears of Agatha. 
The voice of Marmaduk Hawmer was now 
heard, addressing the young people for their 
profit. “ As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout,” 
he said, “ so is a fair woman without discretion.” 

A bold-eyed woman — who, but for the whole- 
some restraints of her early home and of a good 
husband, might have been standing there in 
Rachel’s stead — derided the unhappy culprit : 
“ Why did you loiter like a foolish bird near the 
snare of the fowler? You were, I make no 
doubt, predestined to come to shame in our 
town.” 

The people swayed this way and that. Rarely, 
two or three women could be seen passing by ; 
with a fine scorn or loathing upon their faces, 


292 


AGATHA. 


expressing the bitter hatred of the sex toward 
those of their own number who fall. Amid the 
bravado vulgarity of those around him, the hang- 
man, of feeble virtue, in his grim responsibility 
for turning the glass at the end of the next 
quarter, could but steal a curious glance at a 
spectacle which might have made his angel 
mother in heaven shed tears of sorrow, — when 
he bade Kachel face to the north. 

“We must stop immorality in this jurisdic- 
tion,” gravely remarked the hangman Nehemiah 
to Zacary Yassall, who happened to be passing 
with a sack of vegetables thrown over his 
shoulder. 

“ If I were in position to do it, I would have 
the whole of you indicted for corrupting the 
public morals ; and if I could not bring that 
about, I’d thresh every man of you within an 
inch of his life.” 

After some tussle, Zacary was apprehended 
for his manly imprudence ; and all was still. 
Some of the people began to disperse. They 
were, for the most part, servants of the first 
or second generation. The honored projectors, 
founders, leaders of the Bay Colony gave em- 
ployment to a great number of those who were 


AGATHA. 


293 


rude and ignorant ; bringing them over sea to 
develop the country. The servants made up the 
major part of the population. In their great 
prosperity they were given more and more some 
share in the government, — many among them 
uniting with the church and being enrolled as 
freemen. If sheer brutality was sometimes bap- 
tized, it was not usually so. These serving-men’s 
families rose, as time went by, to good social 
rank ; and developed great ability in a business 
way. But great discredit was reflected by their 
acts, at the outset, upon the better class of 
citizens.^ 

Downright cruelty cannot be charged to the 
early settlers, — any more or less than to the 
average Englishmen of that age. If some were 
better than their times, others were not. Theo- 
logically, they believed in devils. They believed 
that Rachel, with her regular features, was a 
fallen angel incarnate. And they treated her 
as they would have handled the devil, — without 
pity. The mediaeval pictures of men pitchforking 
devils, or vice versa^ still adorned the devotional 

1 Lechford’s Plainedealing says (p. 48), “There are 
multitudes of godly men among them, and many poore 
ignorant souls.” 


294 


AGATHA. 


books of that age. Theoretically, the indignity 
was offered to the unclean spirit in the woman, 
not to herself. 

Chilled to the heart, facing the icj-hearted 
people on the north, next the market, the pos- 
sessed woman, in the solitariness of her shame, 
ventured to speak. The clearness of her voice 
still low and musical as of erst, and the nearness 
of her position, made her words easily to pene- 
trate the lattice behind her, where Dosabel and 
Agatha were still sitting, awaiting the end : — 
Good people of Boston, it is not in my heart 
to curse you. Whither I am to go, thither my 
feet will carry me. The God of my fathers has 
brought me hither, here to receive the punish- 
ment fitting to my sins. In His sight, I am but 
a beast, or a worm of the dust. Let me ask 
you, who are called Christians, why is it that a 
prodigal daughter finds it harder to get back 
into good society than the prodigal son ? Look 
to it, 0 men of Boston, do you dare to unveil 
your hearts to God, revealing to Him the vile 
thoughts that fill your bosoms at this moment ? 
Are you not conscious of being ill-deserving ? 
I pray you to leave me, that only the eyes of the 
Infinite Purity may see me in my shame.” 


AGATHA. 


295 


If it is pitiable, it is true that no one in the 
crowd was conscious of ill-desert. Rachel mis- 
took them. But they maintained silence, doggedly 
remaining till the end of the hour. 

When Rachel was turned, to face the east, the 
last quarter of her humiliation, Agatha saw that 
a great change had come over her face. It was 
not a haughty mien she wore, but it was apparent 
that her better nature had now asserted itself, 
and that her soul was yet capable of rising above 
the immediate surroundings. 

It is likely that Rachel, turning toward the 
Orient, had awakened in her mind thoughts once 
exercising great influence upon her, — perhaps 
not now of invocations to the powers of tlie air, 
but of that devotion to Jehovah which was due 
from a daughter of Abraham in exile. The 
great length of the hour, as if it were an age, 
had finally made the punishment not only en- 
durable, but the woman stood somewhat as she 
might have done in solitude. 

Looking towards the morning sun which 
blazoned her shame, although greeted by hot 
looks and stinging words from such depraved 
old men and beldames of the town as had gath- 
ered upon that side, the eyes of Rachel had a 


296 


AGATHA. 


far-away look, — as if she saw rising over the 
ocean her aged mother’s pale face and bent 
figure. ‘‘ Would God,” she exclaimed in a 
half-wild voice, “ that my mother had strangled 
me when I was but a babe ! ” 

With eyes fixed, her face itself seemed to scan 
the horizon, searching this way and that way. 
Then, as if she no longer dwelt upon the forms 
of the Spanish hills, or the outline of the Zuyder 
Zee, the shamed woman looked skyward, as if 
somewhere east of the zenith she might see 
a Divine Form coming out of the mysterious 
depths of heaven to judge the world. No earthly 
taunts disturbed her now. She was listening 
for trumpet-call, and watching for the procession 
of the sheeted dead. 

Happy are those who, in the hours of child- 
hood, have been taught the forms of prayer. 
When the mind is too much agitated by a sense 
of sin and impending wrath to frame connected 
sentences, then some ritual, brought down from 
former ages, which has voiced the sorrows, the 
penitence, the faith of far-off generations, comes 
into the mind like a breviary from the Church 
celestial, opening the flood-gates of the soul for 
the outpouring of confession and petition. Had 


AGATHA. 


297 


it not been for some such forms of prayer, Rachel 
might ere now have forgotten how to pray, or 
dared not lift up her voice to God in words ill- 
chosen. 

Extending now her arms to heaven, the sinning 
woman began in slow and measured tones to 
say : “ Blessed art Thou, the Shield of Abra- 
ham, Bestower of gracious favors. Possessor of 
all things. Supporter of the fallen. Towards 
those who curse me, be my soul as dumb. Annul 
the devices of those who hate me. Exterminate 
every oppressor. Close the mouth of my ac- 
cusers. Erase all record of my sins. Rend the 
decree of my condemnation. Open the gates of 
heaven to my prayer, 0 Thou who art the Par- 
doner of the tribes of Jeshurun throughout all 
generations.” 

After a moment’s silence, as the sands were 
fast running out for her release, she said : 
“ More sinful than Eve in the garden, more sinful 
than Rahab the harlot, more sinful than Bath- 
sheba, am I the daughter of Levi. Unworthy am 
I to lift up the head or to pray. But hear Thou 
my morning prayer for the lewd men with whom 
I have wrought wickedness in Thy sight. Pity 
Thou all who are betrayed. Curse Thou the 


298 


AGATHA. 


bctra3^ers, — or lead them to a better mind. 
And curse Thou, or lead to a better mind, 
those who become the occasion of temptation 
to others.” 

Whetlicr this was a sincere prayer, turning 
heavenward, cannot appear ; since she suddeiil}^ 
paused, and cast her eyes downward. A flush 
of shame overspread her face, when she saw 
Agatha standing near her. The widow in her 
weeds was white as marble ; her large blue eyes 
were expanded, as they looked upon Rachel, and 
they were suffused with tears. With fixed, un- 
recognizing eyes Rachel continued to gaze upon 
her, as though not now without hope. 

When the hour was out, and it was no longer 
legal for the town’s boys to pelt the breast of 
the woman with dead cats, coarse gravel and 
pebbles, Agatha moved with firm step toward 
the stand of infamy. Without speaking, she 
took off her owm robe and tenderly wrapped it 
around the guilty Rachel, — and she kissed her 
in the open company. 

“ Shame ! ” said Agatha in a full, commanding 
voice, turning toward the crowd. “ Is Pity dead 
in God’s town ? ” 

Rapidly moving through the surging villagers, 


AGATHA. 


299 


Agatha, leading Ruchel, followed Miss Cullimer 
to the landing; whither they were slowly pur- 
sued by a straggling line of boys and the officious 
constable. In a few moments the women were 
gliding over the Back Bay toward Miss Culli- 
mcr’s house at Muddy River, — Rachel silently 
holding to the boat-sides with the clutch of 
despair, as if even yet uncertain whether or 
not she had embarked upon some stream leading 
her toward the River of Life. 

The story is now ended. From this point 
there is no old record ; but the tradition is not 
without certain sound, — a tradition credible of 
the daughter of Brewster, and worthy of the 
saintly women of our heroic age. 

Agatha deferred her voyage to London, laid 
aside all her private feelings, all her pride, and 
all her preconceived notions of method in spirit- 
ual work, and devoted herself to the study of a 
way to win the wretched creature upon her hands 
to a life of purity and wholesome mental activity. 

The rough chastisement which the Jewess en- 
dured in the market place acted like a violent 
paroxysm, exciting her mind to normal action ; 
thoroughly breaking up the mental state which 


300 


AGATHA. 


made it easy for her to pursue a career of in- 
famy. But it was a long time before she could 
understand the motive of Agatha in being kind 
to her. “ What does she do it for ? I can be of 
no use to her,” she said to Miss Cullimer, upon 
that morning when she set out with Agatha for 
Hadley, the New England settlement most dis- 
tant from the seaboard. When — in sight of 
the broad meadows and rocky heights near the 
home of Rev. John Russell upon the Connecti- 
cut — Rachel came at last fully to believe in 
Agatha’s unselfish heart, she opened her own 
soul, as if to the light from heaven. 

It now appeared that Rachel had been hin- 
dered not a little in her predetermined course of 
life, by the good influence over her obtained by 
the Mayhews, after Bernard and Agatha left 
Nantucket, — particularly by the maiden Esther, 
who was a typical child of the Old Colony days. 
The innocent girl was not old enough to hate 
Rachel for her sins, nor yet so young as not to 
be attracted by that which remained of good in 
her. The mournful, downcast eyes with which 
Esther, of tender conscience, bemoaned her seem- 
ingly trivial faults, as if she were the chief of 
sinners, — the feeling of self-contempt the child 


AGATHA. 


301 


had for her own frivolities, and the remorse she 
exercised for the harboring of evil intention, — 
quite broke the heart of Rachel as she thought 
by contrast upon her own wayward life. And ^ 
the unaffected kindness of Esther’s parents, 
strongly magnetic people, made a great impres- 
sion upon the wandering Jewess; but if good 
seed was sown in her heart, it was slow in 
upspringing. 

It was long before Agatha could persuade the 
erring woman to believe in the love of God, in 
the revelation of the Friend. “ The father of 
the returning prodigal,” said Agatha, “did not 
upbraid him with his sins.” 

For a long time there seemed to be no other 
work than by an unselfish love to beget an un- 
selfish love. In broken accents the daughter of 
hard-visaged Leah related in much detail the 
extent to which her character had been disor- 
dered in her early life, and how in a moment 
of frenzy she took the life of the babe God had 
given her, lest he live to behold her shame. 

The horror of Agatha knew no bounds. She 
had known little of the difficulty of dealing with 
deranged natures. If she had looked upon Ber- 
nard not as a sinner but as guilty of a single 


302 


AGATHA. 


error ; the confessions of Rachel now brought to 
mind the ancient Hebrew words concerning the 
entire corruption of the soul by sin. Nor liad 
the life-experience of Agatha made her familiar, 
unless in the case of Rachel, with the mental 
and moral idiosyncrasies producible by very er- 
ratic parentage, and severely misdirected early 
education. There could be no doubt that Rachel 
had been at times beside herself ; but, in that 
age, this meant possibly a possession by evil 
spirits. Still, the harder the work to be done, 
the more patiently, the more resolutely, the 
more prayerfully, and more hopefully — relying 
on power divine — did Agatha renew her en- 
deavors day by day. 

The tone of Rachel’s mind little by little im- 
proved ; and if not restored, it may have been 
because her mind had never been such that a 
restoration was desirable. She needed a new 
creation. And Agatha was not without hope 
that she became a new creature. It appeared at 
least as if there was a new principle of life, — an 
unselfish love developing. In the place of evil 
for evil, came into the heart of Rachel a wisdom 
from above, pure, gentle, easy to be entreated, 
and full of mercy. 


AGATHA. 


803 


When, however, by watcliing the face of Rachel, 
Agatha saw the glimmering of hopefulness in 
the place of remorse and despair, it Avas to her 
the presage of victory in that self-contending, 
which became the life-Avork of her Avho sought to 
rise from her fallen condition. 

There could haA^e been no better community 
than sweet Hadley for the outworking of such 
a problem. By the Pastor Russell — toAvard 
whom one’s lieart would easily Avarin upon slight 
acquaintance, and whom one would set up as a 
saint in hero-worship upon greater knowledge 
— a way was opened for Rachel to serA^e the 
aborigines in the neighborhood ; it being a mat- 
ter of policy as Avell as of humanity to do it. 
To throw off her charge upon her OAvn resources, 
making her responsible for life’s failures and 
defeats, Avas the method adopted by Agatha. 

There is no certain knowdedge hoAv long a time 
lapsed in this phase of Agatha’s life, before she 
felt called to resume her journeying over the 
sea. Hadley was^like an asylum to the AA^oman 
who could be little content without wandering, 
and who could not eradicate the inborn pecu- 
liarities of her nature. Rachel maintained the 
same outline of character, her loA^e of display 


304 


AGATHA. 


and of admiration, and those national and 
domestic traits which no blood-letting could 
remove from her veins. But the diseases of her 
soul were healed by a power not her ovm, “Work- 
ing througli her own will ; and by her own will, 
availing itself of a power not her own. And 
there came a time, by her active effort to do 
good to others, when the treasures of kindness 
which she had received at the hands of Agatha 
were bestowed upon the Indian people. Little 
daring to hope for herself, neither did she dare 
to despair. She clung to One mighty to save. 
So the Shadow — that dark life throwing dark- 
ness upon the pathway of others — faded into 
the sunlight; or, the rather, Rachel became a 
light-bearer to others. 

It is with inexpressible sorrow that the dim 
tradition is traced further. As Bernard Anselm 
dropped so suddenly out of the New England 
story upon the eastern seaboard when he entered 
the forests after leaving Marblehead, so Agatha 
almost disappeared from sight when she left the 
neighborhood of Hadley. It is believed that she 
set out once more upon her self-imposed mis- 
sion ; but, as she was about to embark from the 
Shoals, Marcye Saffin, the widowed daughter of 


AGATHA. 


305 


Elder Tart died there, leaving a houseful of or- 
phan children. And Agatha, ready for the duty 
nearest to her, cared for the children. And the 
months lengthened to years upon these rocks in 
the sea ; and Agatha was still mindful of Elder 
Tart’s grandchildren. 

At last came the great fire in London, sweep- 
ing away the most of Agatha’s available income. 
And still she made her home upon these rocks 
in the sea, having an affection for the gray 
lichens which grew upon them, and for the fish- 
erfolk who dwelt there. And one day she fell 
asleep in the Everlasting Arms. 

“ It was,” said old Mathews, like the going 
out of the morning-star when the sun is most 
up. Her light disappeared in the light of 
heaven.” 

And Rachel, who with sobbing poured into 
the deaf ears of the dying her heart-felt grati- 
tude, said that it was like what the Hebrew 
sages called death by a kiss; as Aaron and 
Moses died “ at the commandment ” or “ accord- 
ing to the word” or ‘‘by the kiss” of the Lord 
out of heaven. 

Over the now lost grave upon Star Island 
there stood long a simple headstone. 

sIJ-- 20 


306 


AGATHA. 


Here lyeth y® body of 
Elder^ Brewster’s daught' 

AGATHA ANSELM 

OF 

Lustr’s example of fragrant memory 
T° whos soul 
Y® la we of her God 
was supreme 

Whos adorning was not th* outw^ 
adorning of plaiting y* haire and of 
wearing of golde but y® ornament of 
a meeke and quiet spirit w®** is 
in y® sight of God of g*^ pryce 
For after th® manner in y* olde 
tyme y® holy women also who 
trusted in God adorn’d th’mselv’s 
1. Pet. iii. 3, 4, 5 
A. D. 1669 

The stately beauty of her life, its fitness for 
undying memory upon the earth, she did not 
know. But the heart of Agatha is to-day beat- 
ing in innumerable bosoms, the spirit of an un- 
selfish love, and of a high consecration, mindful 
of the world’s wandering sheep, seeking to save 
that which is lost. 


TO THE EEADER. 






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TO THE READER. 


I. 

Kotes and acknowledgments, so ordered as to 
instruct the reader, and to do justice to certain 
authorities not named in the text. 

Page 10. “Robinson’s church in Leyden.” As to 
the place where the Pilgrims worshipped, the text 
is based upon Prince’s “Annals,” 238 ; and Mor- 
ton’s “New England Memorial,” edited bj^ Davis, 
127, note. Per contra, vide George Sumner’s 
“Memoirs of the Pilgrims at Leyden” (Cam- 
bridge, 1845, 8vo, pages 35), 12, 14, 15; and 
Winslow in Young’s “ Chronicles,” 384. 

Page 11. “The daughter of Elder Brewster.” It 
is a curious confession — Young’s “Chronicles” 
(p. 470) — as to Elder Brewster’s children, that 
“the exact number has not been ascertained.” 
A slight comparison of the authorities shows that 
when the annalists had once taken the census, 
and had settled it to their minds, more children 
appeared from over the sea, confusing the count. 


310 


AGATHA. 


Love Brewster was most likely entered as a girl 
by some of the tall 3 "-keepers. 

Page 34. Reasons for removing from Leyden. 
Yide Winslow’s “ Brief Narration,” in Young, 
381 ; and Bradford, in Young, 47. 

Page 35, note. The seventeenth century Irish im- 
migrants. The author acknowledges great joy 
in searching grim archives, when he saw the smil- 
ing faces of Dennis and Patrick peering out upon 
him, — e. g. Essex County Court Records, vol. 50, 
p. 121, et al. 

The French immigrants. Consult Winslow, 

. in Young, 393, 394. 

“ Old-comers.” The passengers of the first three 
ships, the “ Mayflower,” the “ Fortune,” and the 
“Anne,” were, for reasons pertaining to the busi- 
ness of the colony, termed the “ old-comers.” 
Yide Young, 352. 

Page 40. “Brewster farm.” Winsor’s Duxbury, 
234. 

Pages 41, 42. Compare the account of Plymouth 
and the Sabbath array with De Rasieres’ letter, 
“ New England Memorial, Appendix,” 497, edi- 
tion of the Congregational Board of Publication, 
Boston, 1855. 

Page 44, note. “ Court orders.” Yide Plymouth 
Colony Records, Boston, 1855, passim. 


TO THE READER. 


311 


Page 47. “ I cannot but think . . . behalf.’^ Win- 
slow, in Young, 355. 

Page 52. East line. “Like an ancient mother, 
grown old and forsaken of her children.” 
Bradford. 

Page 54. “We have been long content with the 
poor soil of Plymouth,” etc. Compare statement 
in ‘ ‘ Bicentennial Celebration at Barnstable.” 

Page 55. “ Violets and honeysuckles.” Morton’s 

“ New Canaan,” Prince Societ}-, 228, states that 
the “ arematicall herbes ” of the New England 
coast so impregnated the air along shore that 
passengers or crew upon coastwise craft from 
unwholesome Virginia were revived and recov- 
ered of sickness. 

Page 58. Frayicis Johnson. Vide Bradford, in 
Young, 424, 425. 

Page 59. The Pilgrims^ year at Amsterdam. 
Young, 34. 

Madam Johnson's cork heels. Bradford, in 
Young, 446. 

Clifton's stay in Amsterdam. Young, 453. 

Pages 60, 61. Ainsworth's character. Bradford, in 
Young, 448, 454. 

Page 61. The diamond story., — “ A Jew claimed 
it.” Neal’s “ Puritans,” in two volumes, London, 
1754, i. 437. 


312 


AGATHA. 


Aaron LevTs birthplace, — ‘ ‘ Villeflenr in Por- 
tugal.” Vide ‘‘ An Account of the Ten Tribes 
in America,” by Robert Ingraham, Colchester, 
1792, p. 16. 

Page 62. Jewish rites in the “ South American 
wildsT The best account of the travels of Levi, 
and the observations thereon by Manasseh ben 
Israel, is in the little octavo of Ingraham, referred 
to supra. The description of the Jewish syna- 
gogue near Lake Chuta in the West India prov- 
ince Collai, and the account of Hebrew customs 
among the Indians, appear upon pages 17, 18. 
Ingraham thinks that the waters of Behring’s 
Straits were dried up for the passage of the Ten 
Tribes to America (pp. 43, 46, 47). 

Page 62. “Could never obtain the consent of the 
rabbis” to debate with Ainsworth. Neal, i. 
437. 

Page 63. “Ainsworth was poisoned.” Neal, i. 
437. 

Pages 78, 79. “ Come sickness ... will or thought.” 
Tauler, Sermons, 57, 58. Tr. by Winkworth, 
London, 1857. 

Page 126. “A severe and proud dame she was.” 
Mrs. Rowlandson’s Narrative, 63, 64. 

Page 127. “A heavy weight of lobsters.” “New 
England Prospect,” part ii. ch. 20. 


TO THE READER. 


313 


Page 131. “To requite them.” “New England 
Prospect,” 92-94. 

. Page 136. “In some retired place,” etc. If this 
paragraph interests any one, the reader will do 
well to consult “The Art of Talismanic Magic: 
Being selections from the works of Rabbi Solo- 
mon, Agrippa, Barrett, etc. By Raphael. Third 
edition, 1883, pages 105.” 

Pages 145, 146. Any reader desiring fuller infor- 
mation upon this topic will thank the author for 
referring to “A History of the Establishment 
and Residence of the Jews in England, with an 
enquiry into their Civil Disabilities. By John 
Elijah Blunt, of Lincoln’s Inn, Esq., M. A., 
Barrister at Law. Saunders & Benning, London, 
1830, 8 VO, pages 148.” 

Page 147. Much curious information, elsewhere 
hard to find in so small compass, is contained 
in Mocatta’s admirable lectures upon the “Jews 
of Spain and Portugal. London, 1877, 12mo. 
pages 99.” 

Pages 167, 168. Mayhem's words. Compare 
Young, 257, 261. 

Page 168, “Bulrushes.” Freeman’s “ Cape 

Cod,” ii. 423. 

Page 171. The two forms “ Nobsque” and “ Nopque ” 
• probably originated in the slight diflference in 


314 


AGATHA. 


pronunciation between the Wood’s Holl Indians 
and those upon Nantucket. 

Page 183. “ Am I not wounded . . . heavenly 

fold?” The reader of old English devotional 
writers will compare this passage with the words 
of Sutton, 1600. 

Page 187. Dantes Inferno : vide cantos xxiv., xxv. 

Page 189. “ Rugged ways,” etc. Augustine’s “Con- 
fessions,” Pusey’s translation, 66: also, “Knock 
at thine ears,” etc., 101. 

Page 203. “There is a secret delight and sweet- 
ness in the tears of repentance, a balm in them 
that refreshes the soul.” Leighton. 

“It is not looking into j^our heart that will 
clear up your doubts, but looking unto Jesus.” 
Samuel Harris. 

“ Despondency produced by physical causes 
cannot be removed by reasoning, any more than 
a headache or a paroxj’sm of the gout.” Jones’s 
“ Man, Moral and Physical.” 

Page 205. “ Our salvation consists not . . . plucked 
out of His hand.” Quoted in that very valua- 
ble book, “ Man, Moral and Ph^^sical.” 

Page 206. Old Latin Hymn. Rabanus Maurus, 
A. D. 840, translation of Caswell, 1849. 

Page 207. The configuration of Nantucket. Al- 
though he does not owe to it the “ fish-hook*' ’ 


TO THE READER. 


315 


alluded to, the author takes this opportunity to 
express his great obligation, in chapters 

xviii.-xxi., to the valuable Historical Map 
prepared by F. C. Ewer, D. D., 1859, a copy 
of which is to be found, with other material of no 
small interest, in Godfrey’s “Nantucket Guide.” 
Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1882. 

Pages 214, 215. Compare with liturgical forms in 
“Ceremonies, Customs, Rites, and Traditions of 
the Jews,” by Hj'am Isaacs, London, between 
1831 and 1835, pp. 63, 65, 67, 68. 

Pages 222, 223. “O Thou . . . walk upon the 
waves.” Saint Anselm. 

Page 224. “ Our dwelling is but a wandering, and 

our abiding but as a fleeting.” Cushman’s Dis- 
course, Young, 241. 

Page 225. “ Fame.” The best account of Anton}" 

Anselm is that given by Jules Delcourt, the emi- 

^ nent Belgium advocate. Brussels, 1866. 

Page 226. “A fair and beautiful city, and of a 
sweet situation.” Bradford. 

Page 227. “Storks.” Erasmus said that the Am- 
sterdam people were like storks, building in the 
tops of trees. 

Page 229. “ The pedigree of Cromwell.” Blunt’s 

“Jews in England,” 71, referred to supra. 
Whether the Jews really expected to find^their 


316 


AGATHA, 


Messiah by help of the Bodleian library is doubt- 
ful. Kabbi Manasseh ben Israel petitioned Crom- 
well to allow Jewish residence in England. The 
Protector appointed a commission to decide, and 
made a verj^ eloquent speech in favor of it. The 
adverse vote was of little effect ; and the Jews 
who came were never disturbed. 

Page 238. “Let my soul be like the dust.” Old 
form of the liturgy of to-day. Compare Eder- 
sheim’s “Jewish Social Life,” p. 135 (Religious 
Tract Society, London, 1876), with Hj am Isaacs* 
work, p. 26. 

Page 242. “ The country was 3^et raw,” etc. Cush- 
man’s Discourse, in Young, 265 ; also compare 
264. 

Pages 247-251. Consult Raphael’s work referred 
to supra. 

Page 251. “Some correspondency . . . her con- 
sort.” Morton’s “New Canaan,” Prince So- 
ciety, pp. 150, 151. 

Pages 251, 252. “ As I was going homeward . . . 

splintered;” and pages 252, 253, “Ball of fire 
... by the roots.” Compare this whole ac- 
count with Morton’s “New England Memorial,” 
pp. 155, 178-180, 319. Also, and particularly, 
with the report made by Captain Nathaniel 
Thomas in “Thunder and Lightning and Deaths 


TO THE READER. 


317 


at Marshfield in 1658 and 1666.” By Nathaniel 
B. Shurtleff. Privately printed, Boston, 1850. 

Page 253. “ Terrible things in righteousness.” 

Winslow, in Young, 350, indicates that when the 
Indians prayed for rain, it came in no gentle 
fashion ; so that Hobbamock took notice of the 
gentle way in which the drought of the summer 
of 1623 was broken up after the Pilgrim fast- 
day. But when the white man’s fast-da}'^, alluded 
to in the “New England Memorial,” supra., was 
followed by lightning, killing several persons, the 
pious Pilgrims said that the Lord answered them 
by terrible things in righteousness. 

Pages 256, 257. “This storm . . . two nights 
after it.” Compare “New England Memorial,” 
179, 180. Fifth edition. Boston, 1826. Also 
Young, 485. The Thatcher’s Island wreck left 
only one relic, — a cradle still in the Thatcher 
family at Yarmouth. 

Page 263. “ The spinning-wheel . . . point of the 

spindle.” Compare with the relation given by 
Mary J. Taber in “ The Watchman,” Ixviii. 12. 

‘ ‘ Mohegan warrior.” Consult Caulkins’s ‘ ‘ His- 
tory of New London,” 128. 

Page 265. “Bride Brook.” Caulkins, 48, 49. 

Page 266. Early Jews in New York, Esquiros’s 
“ Dutch at Home,” 219. , 


318 


AGATHA. 


Page 268. “ The atmosphere of the community was 

very different from that which pervaded the Puri- 
tan colonies.” De Rasieres’ letter, “ New Eng- 
land Memorial” (Cong. Pub.), p. 498. 

Page 270. “Dutch . . . jewelry.” Madam Knight’s 
Journal, 54, 55. New York, 1825. 

“ Ornaments of beryl,” etc. Consult Raphael, 
as supra., 59-65. 

Page 277. “ It is . . . home.” A. H. T., a name 

well known in the heavenly hill countrj", and en- 
graved upon the hearts of cherished ones upon 
the earth. 

Page 287. “It was by authority that she stood 
there.” Compare with Savage’s “Police Recol- 
lections,” 29 ; also the Journal of Rev. John 
• Baylej’, in private hands. 

Page 297. Compare with the Ritual of H3^am Isaacs, 
pp. 19, 26, 27, 28, 58 ; referred to supra. 

Page 299. “ Violent paroxj^sm.” De Vere, “Mod- 

ern Magic,” 353 (Putnam, New York, 1873), 
states that relief from nervous possession may 
be wrought by anything that takes a strong hold 
^ on the mind of the patient. 

Page 305. “ By a kiss.” Deut. xxxiv. 5; Num. 

xxxiii. 38. 


TO THE READER, 


319 


II. 

The reader who is curious in Colonial matters 
will not fail to derive much information of para- 
mount interest in its relation to Mr. Anselm^ if he 
looks up the following references : — 

Page 12. Capture of trading-post. Winthrop, i. 
117; Mass. Hist. Coll. Series 4, iii. 293, 294; 
Hanney’s “Acadia,” 132; Drake’s “Boston,” 
183. 

Page 26. “The largest tax.” Thacher’s “Ply- 
mouth,” 71, note. 

Page 28. Bringing over more Pilgrims. “New 
England Memorial,” Davis’s edition, 158. 

The Kennebec patent. “New England Me- 
morial,” 388, 389, 391-4 ; also 158, note, 39. 
Page 29. The Shirley letters and the colonial agent. 
Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 69-71. Prince, 203. 

Gorges and the “ charter business” Morton’s 
“ New Canaan,” pp. 35, 36, 52. Edited by C. F. 
Adams, Jr., Prince Society Publications. 

Page 30. “Vex Bradford.” Bradford, 252, quoted 
in “ New Canaan,” 37. 


320 


AGATHA. 


Page 50, note. “Seven acres.” “New England 
Memorial,” 376. 

Page 162. “ Left out of the government.” Thach- 

er’s “Plymouth,” 115. 

Page 241. With Winslow and Fuller at Salem. 
“ New England Memorial,” 393. Mass. Hist. 
Coll., iii. 75. 

“Six vessels.” Felt’s “Salem,” ii. 211. 
Second edition. Roads’s “ Marblehead,” 8. 

Page 254. Difficulty at Plymouth and removal 
from Marble Harbor. Roads’s “ Marblehead,” 
8, 9. 

Page 258. “Lost to the sight of New England 
historians.” Hutchinson, ii. 461. 

Page 266. “ His tobacco-house.” Stone’s “ History 
of New York City,” 90. New York, 1872. 

“ Merchant.” Pty. Col. Records, ii. 133. 

Page 266. “ Chosen mayor.” Consult “ New Eng- 

land Chronology,” by Alden Bradford, 37. Bos- 
ton, 1843. 

Page 273. Removed to New Haven. Mass. Hist. 
Coll., xxvii. 243-9, — the letter of Leonard 
Bacon, D. D., to Judge Davis. 


TO THE READER, 


321 


III. 

It is since writing, that the author has learned 
with some fulness concerning the work of Mrs. 
Josephine Butler, of Winchester, and that of Miss 
Ellice Hopkins, of Brighton, England ; work which 
must gladden the Bethesdas of the world, so long 
engaged in that honored service which is repulsive 
to many, and ill-suited to hearts of unbelief, but 
in which the Son of Man loved to labor, — the work 
of lifting up the fallen, or hindering their fall. 




©It Colons Scrirs of Wofaels. 


CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. 

l2mo. Handsome Cloth. Price, $1.50. 


EXTRACTS FROM CRITICAL NOTICES. 

“ Acadia, apparently, is not only inexhaustible in romance, but 
it has a history that blends so happily with its romance that in this 
writer’s hands it is all one web ; and the less learned reader will do 
well not to attempt to say which is which. What strikes one no 
less than the poetic beauty of the book is this mastery of the his- 
torical situation. The thoroughness with which the author has 
assimilated the facts of that remote time and scene is of the same 
effect in his art as close observation of contemporary life would 
be ; and there is a comfortable reality in the people very uncommon 
in historical fiction. . . . There is a very pleasant humor mixed 
with the more historic strain of the book. . . . We welcome in 
the book a fresh and brilliant achievement. . . . We can praise 
‘Constance of Acadia’ as a beautiful and touching story.” — 
W. D. Howells, in Harper's Magazine. 

“ The figure of Constance, beautiful and heroic, stands out in 
exquisite relief. ... Few stories chronicle such burning incidents 
and such force of mental and moral conflict. The book is one to 
read carefully, and more than once.” — The Critic. 

“There is an undefinable charm about the book which grows on 
one at second perusal.” — Salem Gazette. 

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geline.” — Unitarian Review. 

“The refined pathos of the book, the refinement of t^ste that 
distinguishes it, the skill and spirit with which the plot is devel- 
oped, the force and naturalness of its character drawing, and, above 
all, the impressive local color the author has imprinted upon it 
throughout, make it reading of the most pleasing and most attrac- 
tive nature.” — Gazette., Boston. 


“ A dry humor is displayed, which here and there recalls Irving's 
‘Knickerbocker.’” — New York Tribune. 

“It is in spirit a veritable story to the imagination, by reason 
not of its veracity but the verisimilitude of its statistical details. 
It resembles De Foe’s ‘ History of the Plague in London,’ and 
another masterpiece, Hale’s ‘ Man without a Country.’ ” — Christian 
Register. 

“ ‘ Constance ’ is a very readable book, and this because it is very 
real. It is as truthful to the history of Acadia as fiction can be. 
One is reminded at almost every page of Parkman’s history. The 
characters are finely drawn, the plot ingenious, and the scenic 
effect is that of genuine drama. If this is a fair specimen of the 
Old Colony Series, one may say, wUh more truth than the words 
usually express, that it is a series which neither an historical library 
nor a library of representative fiction ‘can do without.’ ” — Austin 
Phelps, LL.D. 

“ It is a very noble and noteworthy book, full of the rare gift of 
sympathy with remote times and persons and of insight into their 
conditions, which makes history live again. Such a character as 
the Lady Constance is an exquisite creation, breathing the aroma 
of the romance and the faith of a great period. The charm of 
the book is greatly enhanced by its intimate sympathy with Nature, 
to whom the author has evidently lived close in her various moods. 
I know none of our writers except our New England poets in 
whom this is so evident, and none who have more the power of 
setting their narrative in the framework of our majestic and beau- 
tiful scenery. The sea and the wilderness, so described, form a 
worthy background to the devout, tender, heroic elements of the 
picturesque story. . . . Our history is full of passages adapted for 
such treatment ; and I trust that this is the beginning of a series 
in which all of the volumes may be as fresh, as charming, and as 
well suited to be put into the hands of young readers.” — Henry 
W. Foote, D.D., Minister of King*s Chapel. 


CONSTANCE OF ACADIA 

is in style uniform with “ Agatha.” Price, $1.50. Copies mailed, 
post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 


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